


Can't Trust the Fall

by bansheenanigans



Series: 1001 Bottles of Realm Reborn Red [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Background found family shenanigans, Developing Relationship, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, some smut peppered throughout
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:06:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 24,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22344556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bansheenanigans/pseuds/bansheenanigans
Summary: It's the old cliche about falling very slowly and then all at once, which accurately describes both a severe weather event and the relationship between Yldegarde Kolfrid and Thancred Waters.
Relationships: Warrior of Light/Thancred Waters
Series: 1001 Bottles of Realm Reborn Red [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1608463
Kudos: 12





	1. Regrettably, Something New Blooms in Thanalan

**Author's Note:**

> A series of little snippets throughout the FFXIV timeline concerning Yldegarde Kolfrid, my Rava Viera Warrior of Light, and her absolutely terribly inconvenient love for one particular Scion. Some chapters may be a little smut-laden, and will be labeled as such in the beginning!  
> This first chapter also includes Kokouji's Lyrit Aibek, who I adore! Go read his work too, it's sublime!

“Ugh!” Yldegarde chokes out, swallowing thickly of the drink set before her, “Who bought this? It’s awful!” 

“I believe it was Urianger’s choice,” Thancred grimaces, pushing his goblet further away, “Wise the man may be, but learned in his cups he apparently is not.” 

“It’s drier than his sense of humor.” She manages, before snatching up the bottle to inspect the label. Despair works its way across her features quickly as she scans the words, before the bottle is returned to the improvised table and she stands to assess better options. 

“How you can ruin a perfectly good batch of rolanberry and sun lemons and turn them into...that, I cannot fathom. I suspect witchcraft of the worst kind.” 

Thancred pauses, before taking a sniff of his cup. 

“Sun lemon? How did you even catch that out of this rot ?” 

She scoffs as she rummages through their limited stores, finally wrapping sharp fingers around the neck of a dusty old bottle. 

“We used to ferment them with honey and cane to make a summer drought back home. Whoever made that,” She gestures with disgust back at the bottle, “Let it sit for ages too long, and didn’t bother with the ratio of the cane, so now it’s bitter and overripe.” 

The man considers this for a moment, before holding his nose and downing the remains of his cup, holding out the empty goblet for a share of Yldegarde’s find. 

“Am I to assume that as well as a beauty and a scholar, you did a turn as a distiller?” He smiles at her, and she laughs before pouring her own goblet full, drinking deep with a grin. Much better. 

“Not that far, dear Master Waters,” she shrugs, and swirls her glass, leaning back in her rickety old chair, “Before I left Golmore, I tried out a good many things to be useful to my kindred. I’m afraid I never hit much of mastery until I called up that first bit of lightning, however.”

Thancred blinks, catching her eye with a curious look. 

“You’re from the Golmore, then?” 

She groans. 

“Oh, you rascal. One drink in and I’ve already let slip one thing too many. Better you think I appeared fully formed in Ul’dah to bother you into letting me assist the Scions, with naught before.” 

“Would it be so terrible for me to know more about you, Yldegarde?” 

She ponders this for a breath, tapping nails on the planks that they’ve balanced on a barrel for a table. 

“Perhaps not, but I warn you, Thancred, I would not make it easy, and I do not give information without knowledge in return.” With a batting of her eyelashes and a wicked smile, she takes a sip from her goblet and sighs happily, swallowing sweet and smooth liquor down. 

To his credit, Thancred does not so much as blink before offering up a grin and leaning forward onto their table with one elbow.

“Are you proposing a drinking game, Yldegarde?”

“Equal parts exchange and game. Winner is such a subjective term, don’t you think?,” she grins, and the sharp edges of her canines glint in the lantern light, “But I am a champion, for certain. Are you?”

“The lady protests my honor and skill in one blow, and that I cannot let slide,” Thancred laughs, and there is the faintest coloring in his cheeks as he meets her gaze, “You let slip your Golmorean origins, so I’ll return the favor. I hail from Limsa, though it has changed much from my youth. Progress, I’m sure, in equal measure to misfortune.” 

He takes a drink, and smiles wide. This drink is significantly better than the last, and goes down sweeter. It doesn’t bode for a long game, particularly, but perhaps a good one.  
“For the sake of legality, I’ll suffer to call what you do simple thaumaturgy-“

“Much appreciated, as I’m sure Y’shtola and Urianger both would lecture me if you called like it is. Darkened arts doth dim the dawn’s light, or whatever he’ll say.”

A laugh, a drink, a warm smile. Her heart skips, and she wishes she could hold it to the ground and bid it quiet. 

“What brought you towards these darker arts, fine lady? Don’t think I haven’t seen you fiddle with the daggers and bows here when you’re idle. You’ve got skill, yet touch no martial weapon in the field.”

She rolls her eyes at the turn of phrase before closing them to take another sip of her drink. She cracks open the left, blue trending into violet more and more as days go by, to watch him lazily before considering her response. 

“I...have been a huntress, in my time, and I have held balance on a blade. I find it no longer suits me, and I shall not return to it. The girl I was, I no longer feed. And besides, my studies better suit a push and pull. Why do you do what You do, Waters? Does not a gladiator’s life risk your lovely face?”

He laughs, and she can see the faint hints of red color his cheeks and ears even as he turns away to take another drink.

“I take up what roles do serve our cause, and besides,” he swirls his cup, peering over at her with a smile, “I'd cut a dashing figure on the sands, would I not?” 

“Oh, dashing indeed, dashing indeed.” She smirks back, and a long-fingered hand flutters over the arm he leaves on the table, a thumb pressed to the quickened pulse point before retreating back to her own glass. She plays her game expertly, and with practiced distance. But, oh, she does like to see him fluster. He's ever been the charmer in his own life, she knows that well enough, has seen him flirt about Ul'dah like a professional. It's oh so satisfying to give him a taste of his own medicine from time to time, and that is what she considers it. It's only a game, a play with two actors. It's not _real_. It could never be real. 

“Why venture to our fair Eorzea, Miss Kolfrid? I profess little knowledge of the Golmore, but I imagine something prodded you off from the paradise of home.” 

Yldegarde chuckles, tapping her nails against her chin in feigned thought. 

“Maybe it was writ in the stars that I ought become an outcast and exile to my people in order to play games with a Hyuran tease in a dusty basement.” She offers, and bristles as Thancred rolls his eyes back at her.

“I’ll forgo that you called me a tease and defend my honor at a later date, in order to suggest a rule to our game,” he holds up one calloused hand, waving it in a slight motion, “Can our answers be honest?”

Her spine feels laced with mythril, lance-straight and axe-heavy. The silence drags over the stones like the weight of a great beast in the grip of an ever-greater Hunter. 

“...Not tonight.” She answers quickly, before standing abruptly, near knocking her glass over. She abandons it there, sparing barely a passing glance to the bewilderment working itself over Thancred’s face at her hasty retreat. “Another time. I’ve intents with Master Aibek in the city, and no more time for games. I bid you good eve, Waters.”  
——————  
“I played my cards much too loosely,” she sighs into her drink, knees huddled up right under her chin. The night is cool on the Goblet terrace, where she and Lyrit have made their claim on a corner. “Don’t give me that look, Aibek.”

A perfectly arched eyebrow rises, betraying little behind soft pink irises. It’s barely an expression, but combined with the lax posture and the slightest downwards turn of his mouth, she reads it. 

“I didn’t ask you to come out here just to make me feel like I did something wrong.”

“I didn’t say anything at all.” He offers almost blandly, a shrug of wide shoulders that bumps into her own. “I have said four words since we sat down.”  
She groans.

“You don’t Have to. It’s written on your face.” 

“I doubt it.” Lyrit responds, but takes another drink of his wine. He’s been working through the same surplus of bottles as long as she’s known him, and she knows at least a part of his agreement to sit with her was to get rid of another. Enjoyment of her company and their oddly trusting arrangement aside, she knows he has to be sick of Realm Red by now. 

“Don’t be dense,” she grumbles, before catching a bemused quirk of his mouth from the corner of her eye, “If you dare make some comment about muscle mass-“

This shrug just seems sarcastic, somehow. 

“I hate you.”

“You don’t.”

“That doesn’t change that I hate you.” 

The silence stretches on for far too long. 

He sits up from his lean against their pile of cushions, fixing her with a vague, serious sort of look. 

“We didn’t have plans.” The question is there. _Why did you run? Why did it scare you that badly if you're just playing a game?_ But he doesn’t ask it. She just knows better. 

She sighs, and lets her head fall back against the cushion, hair fanning out and bristling in the breeze. 

“Because.”

He doesn’t look particularly impressed by that.

“Because I don’t owe him anything. He’s just some pretty boy I’m stuck fawning over until I get a hold of my senses again. He doesn’t need to know why I am who I am. He doesn’t even know me.” She grits her teeth against the indignity of her explanation, squinting up at the stars. 

The tilt of his head and an unimpressed quirk of one mouth corner speaks volumes. 

“Shut up.”

His mouth opens, as if to assert yet again that he didn’t say a word, before it closes into a frown at her withering stare. 

“I refuse to let him feel...pity for me. For me. How ridiculous it would be to waste pity and sympathy on such a creature as i am. I’m fine, aren’t I? I need no such thing.” 

His shoulder bumps hers, and then holds there, and she leans into it, resisting the urge to bolt and suffer her indignity in private. It wouldn’t help, she knows that. It doesn’t make being vulnerable much easier. Though, at least it is just Lyrit. Obsessive lifter and hoarder of burdens, she’s loathe to give him more without fair exchange, but he understands her better than most, and he doesn’t try to fix it. Fix her. 

“Why does it matter to him why I’m here? To anyone? I just am. And I can’t go back, so I’ll be here. It’s how it is.”

He considers this, she thinks, before leveling her with a curious gaze.

“Even if I wanted to, yeah. And I do, and I don’t, and...ugh!” 

She pulls her hands into fists and lets her knees drop into a comfortable seating position before grinding her palms into the flesh of them.

“Viera, we...we have rules, mayhaps that you wouldn’t know, for we’re also quite isolationist. For the Rava especially, my kin, the outside world is a forbidden, dirtied place. If you leave, you are not allowed back. Your family will do its best to forget your face, for you can never come home to them.”  
She pauses, assessing his features. To his credit, he looks somber, but still curious. 

“But some...some problems can’t be fixed from inside a bubble. Look at Ishgard, if you will. They suffer and abandon the rest of the land for tradition and for their supposed rules, but would they not benefit from outside assistance?”

Lyrit frowns, but doesn’t particularly seem to disagree with her, just takes another sip of his wine and nods at her to continue.

“The Golmore itself thrives eternal, but where I was born does not. It had...started to twist when I was a girl, after the Garlean invasion of Dalmasca. The plants died or turned alien, the beasts found themselves taking new habitats. When you rely on nature and nature starts rebelling against you, you must adapt to it. We weren’t adapting quick enough. We listened and we prayed for the Green to give us answers, but that didn’t stop it. There was a sickness in the Mist, the...,” she stops, backtracking into herself when she sees the barest hint of confusion in Lyrit’s gaze, “We called Aether, Mist, and we spoke the Green Word, the one that held us tightly to it. Its...it would take far too long to explain centuries of tradition. But there was a sickness. Our patch of paradise was failing. Corrupted, like so much here after the Calamity. And there was nothing we could do with what we had.”

Lyrit is like a bonfire, and even jungle-raised, sometimes she thinks he’s much too warm to be close to. But despite it, she doesn’t shift away, finding the spare bit of contact somewhat comforting. 

“Maybe I shouldn’t have left. Maybe I should have stayed and tried to solve from the inside more, bucked traditions when they were still mine to claim. But I didn’t. I left and made poor choices and met a scoundrel and...and too many heroes, and I’m here now. You’re stuck with me.”

The eye roll, she thinks, is a little unnecessary. But it does make her laugh, even a little bit. 

“Better you know than Thancred and the Scions that I’m a homeless heretical outcast, huh? You never treat me like anything but myself. I...appreciate that.” 

The smile he grants is warm, and a little rare in feeling, and she can’t help but beam back. Her hands uncurl from her thighs and grip her glass, peering into the empty vessel with displeasure. 

“I know it’s a stupid question, but do you have more of that wine? I’m feeling fit to drown my regrets and run scantily clad into the pools in drunken euphoria, cause a scene or two. Make a bit of mischief before I decide I’m too dignified a scientist to be a buffoon.” 

He’s already pulled two more bottles out of his basket before she’s finished talking. It was a stupid question.


	2. An End Before a Beginning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Yldegarde barely avoids embarrassing herself, and succeeds in confusing herself instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now including M'oe Shi, one of the other Warriors of Light in Ylde's canon (she's one of a set of three!) and breakfast muffins.

If the choice came down between waking up with a hangover headache that felt like a dozen cactuar needles pressed up against the inside of her skull and facing a week in Halatali, unfortunately at that very moment, Yldegarde Kolfrid might have chosen Halatali. As it were, she awoke with a miserable ache in her back from her contorted position, curled up half-on and half-off of her ‘borrowed’ Adder utility cot. She’d always claimed that she needed very little in the way of comfort, when she slept so little, but the audible creak of her bones as she moved to sit up suggested that a proper bed would not be amiss in her future plans. If only for the sanctity of her spine. 

She groans and squints her eyes closed, hands scrabbling at the mess of her bedside to find the cord that would pull her window shades closed. With the cool cover of dimmed lights, she rubs at the crick in her spine, stretches, grimaces into the blinding pang of pain in her head. It’s a few minutes of careful contortions and muttering before she cracks open a single eye, already considering the easiest path to the company kitchens to brew up a hangover cure. 

And discovers that she is not, in fact, alone in her room. Facedown in the futon mattress at the end of her bed is none other than Thancred Waters, one sandaled foot still propped up on her own cot. The Hyur is snoring, and that’s the only relief she can get, knowing that he is asleep, and could not possibly have witnessed her groggy contortions with the utmost lack of modesty. 

[align]

The problem, however, is that Thancred Waters is asleep in her quarters, and if she brought him home during the night, it was inevitable that someone knew. Someone had to have seen. Their company always had someone home, at least, if not nearly everyone, excluding Khiiral and his wanderings and Lyrit’s myriad grand quests. 

The second problem, assuming that by some miracle, no one witnessed her let the Scion into their house, was that by this time of morning, someone would absolutely see her escort him out. The placement of their lot in the Goblet was unfortunately that which made egress from a back door or window impossible, unless she wanted to hoist the man out the window and into the aqueducts to spare herself embarrassment. 

The third, of course, was that she had absolutely no memory of bringing him home, or what had transpired before they’d fallen asleep. And, perhaps, this lent itself to the idea that maybe, she had drank a bit too much in celebration. Thancred was a bit of a lightweight, she’d discovered, In their frequent chats and bouts of flirtation over a mug of something sweet and too easy going down. She was significantly less so, however, and should have known better, shouldn’t she? Whatever she had been up to, she should have known better.  
Both eyes open and frantically assessing made apparent that both individuals held their full clothing, with nothing amiss to suggest regrettable affairs. A sweep of her dimmed room made clear enough that they’d clearly stumbled in, knocking a few things over in their wake, before coming to rest where they were. Both pleasantly relieving in a way. A panicked eye towards the door, on the other hand, revealed it to be most noticeably ajar, M’oe holding what seemed to be one of her honey muffins from breakfast the day before, a jovial expression on his face. 

“Shut the door, shut the door,” she hisses, and scrambles to stand, knocking over a stack of tomes directly onto her foot, “It’s not what it looks like!”

“It looks like Thancred’s passed out drunk on Khiiral’s mattress and you’re hungover, Ylde.” He shuts the door, having stepped inside and holding out a second muffin in some sort of peace offering.

“Oh. Well. Then it is exactly what it looks like. Never mind.” She takes the muffin, even though the idea of food right now makes her stomach churn.

“I didn’t think he’d be staying the whole night when you brought him in last night, but I’m happy for you!” The Miqo’te smiles up at her, and she groans, dragging her muffin-less hand down her face.

“Nothing happened, M’oe, I just brought a friend home to sleep off a drunken stupor-“

“Is that what you call sitting in his lap in the common room while he told you you were stunning, for three hours, while drinking half of Lyrit’s leftover wine?”

“If we drank near half of that wine we’d be dead of alcohol poisoning- that’s not the point, what did you just say?!” She grips M’oe’s shoulder in pure panic, steering him towards the sitting area of her quarters and away from the snoring Hyur on her floor.

M’oe looks decidedly nonplussed, and clambers to the top of her seating as she sinks down into a cushion. 

“Tell me everything you saw, and who else saw, and...ughhh!” She puts the honey muffin down on the cushion to grind her palms into her eyes, trying to force herself to wake up from what was shaping to be a very horrible dream. 

M’oe shrugs at her, sweet and mischievous smile still plastered on his face. 

“You really don’t remember?“ he asks, cocking his head to the side. His ears twitch, echoing the confusion in his voice.

“No! I don’t! So, please. M’oe. I beg of you, illuminate me.” She just about moans it, and melts into the cushions. He gently pats her shoulder from his perch before taking a bite of his muffin, nodding along. 

“Well, you brought him Home! It was kinda late, but Gorikuu and I were still up. And you were both pretty drunk, but you mentioned something about Urianger having bad taste in alcohol? And Thancred was laughing about it, so you raided the cupboards! And drank more.”

She would become one with the couch at that moment if she possibly could. 

“And you were both flirting up a storm, and I know you like him, so I wasn’t going to kick him out, especially since you seemed to be having a good time. If he’d gotten handsy or anything I wouldn’t have hesitated to hand his ass to him, of course, you know that, but other than being kind of stupid he was pretty gentlemanly.”

Mutely, she nods. Yes, she knows, M’oe would demolish even an ally if they had treated her with anything less than civility and care. The small cat boy was almost as destructive as she was, in his core, a whirling dervish of determination and right hooks wholly unexpected from a White Mage of his caliber. 

“And like, you did make out on the couch downstairs, but you initiated it, and anyway, Gorikuu and I didn’t want to exactly hang out and watch, so we didn’t stick around after that. When I came to check on you you were both asleep, so! I carried you up.”

This makes her crack open an eye, staring up at him.

“You carried us both up?”

“I have excellent core strength! But no, like, one at a time.” 

“I’m not doubting that? I just...oh, sweet, sweet Nymeia, we what?”

“You made out. Pretty intently. I was going to congratulate you on finally making a move!,” he smiles, almost clapping, and then pauses, turning a degree towards serious, “These were congratulatory muffins. But you don’t remember, so I guess...it’s not really a move.” 

“I want to die.” She mumbles, and pulls a cushion up to smother her face in, screwing her eyes shut once again. 

“Oh, don’t be like that. It’s just a hangover. I can fix it! If you want.” There’s a sound, like a steadying to cast, and she shoots out a hand to slap against his knee, a silencing gesture.

“This is divine punishment, leave it be.” She mumbles through her pillow fortress. 

“I think you’re being over dramatic. Isn’t this a good thing? I mean, not the hangover, but the other thing. Getting feelings out into the open! It could be a good start.”  
“It’s the worst sort of thing, because I have no intention of getting feelings into the open, M’oe!”

“Oh,” she can hear the puzzled frown taking shape on his deceivingly angelic face, “Why not? You like him. I’m pretty sure he likes you. He sure said some lovely things, but they weren’t as smooth as usual, so I think they were sincere.”

This gives her a moment of pause, to bite down hard on her lower lip in thought. Maybe that was true. Maybe it was sincere. But did it matter? She didn’t remember it, and she doubted he did. 

She did remember...calloused fingers on her cheek, pulling her in, the smell of whiskey and the taste of honeyed plums. 

She did remember giggling into a kiss, drunk and elated and stupid. 

She did remember falling asleep with her face pressed into cotton, warm and breathing, rather than the threadbare velveteen of her pillow. 

She’s not sure she can get much redder, or what else she cares to remember, when she hears the sound of stirring from beyond the partition. Nearly jumps out of her skin, fear filling her veins. 

“It doesn’t matter,” she shushes M’oe, “We’re colleagues and friends. Nothing more. Whatever happened, doesn’t...doesn’t matter.” 

“Oh.” He manages, with a strain of disappointment and understanding. Maybe he’s remembering her grand statements about heroics, maybe piecing together something about how much she loathes to show fragility. Either way, he quiets, and keeps to his perch, frowning at her as she tiptoes back to the mattress. 

As she suspected, Thancred has awakened, pulled his face out of the pillows with a groan and the telltale mumblings of a man with a hellacious hangover.

“Muffin?” She says, holding out her prize with trepidation as she leans down to offer a hand. He takes both, muffin and hand, in turn, shuffling up to a semi-vertical position. His hair is plastered to one side of his face and sticking up in places, and there’s a noticeable crease in his cheek from resting too hard on a seam in the quilt. It’s somewhat endearing, seeing him undone and unfettered. 

“Do you remember much of last night?” She manages to keep her tone jovial, disinterested. She doesn’t want the answer. She’s terrified of the answer. 

“Mmmm, I...I seem to vaguely recall a mention of Realm Red, and the jaunt over to the Goblet, but after that...I’m afraid it’s a bit hazy. I hope I did not sully your opinion of me by acting as some sort of fool in your home.” He mumbles out through a mouth, she imagines, that feels like it’s full of cotton and clouds. That it tastes like stale whiskey and plums...

“As if I did not already think you some variety of fool, Waters?” She breathes out a laugh, some sort of relief mingled in with the amusement. “No, as far as I’m aware you kept your buffoonery to a minimum, and for that I’m grateful. My company would never let you live it down if not.” 

“We really wouldn’t!” M’oe calls from his perch, and Thancred’s attention turns blearily to the Miqo’te, peering around the partition with glazed eyes. 

“Ah, Master Shi. A pleasure.” He musters up a wave, before looking back at Yldegarde with an expression of mild panic. 

“You acted a gentleman, I’m told, or M’oe would have seen you sleeping if off in the bushes with a few bruises. No worries.” She waves him off with the slightest smile, catching the glimpse of M’oe’s laughing grin from the corner of her eye. 

“Quite the relief, then,” Thancred sighs, and stifles back a yawn, looking slightly queasy as he does, “Still, I must apologize for my disheveled state, and the unjust commandeering of your bedroom. A lady such as yourself certainly deserves better behavior from a guest.”

She shrugs at that, trying all the world to act natural as looking at him bite into the muffin stirs at her recollections. His collar is disheveled, and she spies the slightest bits of unmistakable bruising along his neck, sending her into a fit of coughing that seems to startle him from his groggy stupor. 

“Are you alright?” He asks, concern coloring his face. She nods quickly, trying to swallow down her blush of embarrassment as he moves and the collar falls back into place, obscuring her apparent adventurousness. 

“Fine, fine, you...you don’t remember?” She asks carefully, carefully, don’t show your cards, Yldegarde ... 

“Is there something I need to remember?” He asks in return, and the cock of his head doesn’t seem quite genuine, but whatever stirs beneath the surface doesn’t rear its head.  
She’s silent, thinking, and he doesn’t interrupt, doesn’t move, but he does look at her, and that’s almost worse. He looks at her with something new, and she’s not sure she’s comfortable with it. Ghosts of hands on her hips, ghosts of teeth knocking clumsily, laughing... she shakes her head, loosens the thoughts to scramble back under their respective rocks. She shakes her hair forward to cover her shoulders and her hand brushes against her throat, wincing, certainly a bit tender. And very, very clearly there, she’s sure, though she can’t see it herself. The hair covers it just barely. And maybe he didn’t notice. Maybe it’s safe. 

“No. I don’t think so. I don’t remember, myself.” She shrugs. “Maybe we should drink less.” 

“...Perhaps we should,” he nods, and turns his gaze away from her, finally. It’s freeing and horribly isolating all at once. She feels like, perhaps, she’s made the wrong call, but it’s the only call she can make. She’s promised herself. She’s made plenty of rules. She won’t let one drunken make out session break them. 

When she and M’oe finally lead Thancred back out, see him off from the Goblet and back towards Vesper Bay, she finds herself slumping back into her chair with something like defeat. M’oe pulls her into a hug, and she vaguely hears him promise to grab her lunch, to lend an ear. But she isn’t truly listening, as unfair as that is to her kind friend.

They’d lied to each other, certainly, that much was clear. Lied to protect themselves, to make everything stay as normal. And that was good, wasn’t it? He’d lied to her, she’d lied to him, they would both forget. The tenderness would heal. The taste would fade. There was something in his eyes that said he knew what he’d done, what she’d done, and he agreed wordlessly to further silence. To pretending it hadn’t happened. Which was best, for business, for they were both much too busy for such a thing to worm into their lives. Feelings were inconvenient. And they had such responsibilities, they did... 

So why did it feel like the wrong choice?


	3. Kit, Kin, Kind Fates

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Casually chatting up your former crush after you start dating someone new is...a little awkward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yldegarde starts dating Haurchefant immediately after the end of main ARR! Which might be self-explanatory in the question of why there's a sudden skip of time later. This chapter is very much pre-murder party/pre-HW!   
> Featuring some Thancred "fuck I wasted my chance" Waters getting nosy.

“You’re quite an old hand with the children here.” Thancred muses from his casual leaning location against the outside wall of the Seventh Heaven. Yldegarde pauses in her game with the Doman children, to squawks of outrage. They had been trying to teach her Mahjong, with very little success, as no matter how she tried she never could quite remember the rules, but beating her in a game seemed to bolster their spirits. 

She shrugs, and nods at the children, who scatter through the Toll to find another game to play, leaving their lunch scraps, their game tiles, and a fair few jackets and shoes behind. Gathering up the items to lug back to the Rising Stones steals her attention away from the appraising Hyur. She doesn’t realize he’s moved until he is bent beside her, scooping handfuls of tiles into the end of his tunic like a pouch. The sight is silly, but endearing, in a way. 

“I think they’re quite brave, and very sweet. And it seems to make them happy to make me look a fool in Mahjong. They can never beat Khiiral at, well, anything, and M’oe doesn’t sit for long enough. So I am a prime target.” She laughs. Her arms are full of shoes and discarded layers when she stands back up, and nods her head at the door to the Heaven. 

“They very much like you. Of course, they like the boys too, you’re all three quite the heroes to them, but you...” he pushes the door open ahead of her, holds it as she steps up into the bar gingerly with her arms towering with abandoned items. 

“I’ve always had a soft spot for kits- kids. Kids,” she corrects herself quickly, waiting for him at the door to the Stones patiently, “They have such wonder for the world. So many burning questions and fervent dreams. Their ideas are ludicrous and fresh and brilliant all at once, and they just take a little bit of kindness to shine and grow.” 

“I don’t think I have ever see you quite so...gentle. Not even with your brothers in arms.” He echoes after her with a smile. His tunic jingles with the tiles as he opens up the door. She nods, shrugs a bit, before bounding down the short flight of stairs to the common area of the Stones. She deposits most of the items in the usual places, tucked into corners where the children spend the most time when indoors, and takes the time to line up shoes and sling jackets over chair backs. Once her task is complete, she turns, just in time to see him loose the game tiles onto a waiting tabletop with a cacophonous clatter. 

“My brothers are grown men, who I love dearly and show gentleness in the ways they bear need. Khiiral takes his kindness in places to sleep off a hangover, a hot meal and a mended coat. M’oe is served best with liberal physical affection and a rallying cry, enthusiasm and literal cover fire. Lyrit...” She pauses, and smiles warmly back at Thancred, brushing the dirt off of her skirt, “Lyrit needs what he needs, and I respect him. Which is why I drink his wine and go ‘round to his house from time to time to tend to the simple matters. What needs doing.” 

“That’s a rather tactical way of considering it,” he responds in kind, pulling out a chair for her at a table not scattered with tiles, “But I didn’t fancy I saw a tactician at work with the Doman youth just now. If I had, perhaps you wouldn’t have lost at Mahjong seven times in a row.” 

“Ouch,” She winces comically, before leaning back in her chair, “Counting my losses, Waters? How low.” 

He shrugs, and settles a charming smile when F’lhaminn brings them over mugs of crisp cider and a few leftover biscuits from the morning meal. Yldegarde rolls her eyes, resolving to ignore the ensuing one-sided flirtation. The Doman children pour back into the Stones in a wave, laughing and collecting their possessions before running off to find someone else to pester into a game. As such, she doesn’t notice when Thancred turns his attention back to her, not until she feels the hand tap against her own, and turns to see him eyeing her with interest. 

“Your eyes looked like they nearly belonged to another woman for a moment there. The scientist I've come to know was replaced by a much saddened stranger, I believe.” 

“Must you read me with such keen insight, Waters?” She sighs, but it is still in good fun. She taps her nails against the table as she talks, a rhythm of some long-forgotten melody.   
“I helped take care of the kits back home, before I left. I was rather fond of it. Of them. Some would be around the same age now, and I...I wonder how they’re doing. If they’re happy. If they’re safe.” 

“Ah,” he nods with some sort of understanding, something lost, “It is difficult to watch those you care for grow up, when the world is full of much uncertainty. Worse still to not be able to see them at all. We try to protect them, but sometimes...” 

He stops, and looks briefly uncomfortable, like he hadn’t quite anticipated moving their conversation in this direction. 

“I know you must worry about Minfilia.” She offers quietly. “Even now that she’s grown. Even though you’re still here to protect her.” 

“I have often done a less than optimal job protecting her of late.” He sighs before taking a drink of his cider, looking briefly disappointed that it was simply cider and not something harder. It’s much too early and he’s much too much of a lightweight for F’lahaminn to cave. 

“We all falter,” she shrugs, and clasps a hand over his, “And most of us don't have to deal with an Ascian in our body while doing it. The important thing about family is getting back up and trying again to make it work, make it better for our loved ones. The important thing about raising a child is to never give up on them. And while she is not your child, not exactly, she is your family. And you have never given up on her. So, you haven’t failed.” 

Her words catch him off guard, she can see that much. They’re more candid than she usually prefers, and the soft touch of her hand lingers somberly where usually it is brief and flirtatious. Something seems to catch in his throat. They hold their eye contact for a beat too short, both shying away from the moment and taking a sip of their cider. 

“Am I to expect news of a future Greystone, perhaps, or a winter wedding, if ever we find a moment’s peace?” He smiles at her with the change of subject, but she doesn’t really see it meet his eyes. She doesn’t know quite how to read that, and frankly, she’s afraid to. Her hand slips away from his, curling back around her mug. 

“I doubt Haurchefant and I will...have the opportunity, really. If he’d even want that with me, in the first place, and anyway. I’m hardly fit to be someone's lady wife or mother.” She scoffs, but her cheeks color, and she smooths her hand over one to hide it. 

“Observation and inference beg to differ, Lady Kolfrid.”

“Oh? And would you wed and then trust a child with a woman who regularly consorts with the void? Who works herself to exhaustion? The sort who regularly flirts with death at the claws of beasts for the sake of research? Someone like me?” She rolls her eyes, tucking one curled hand under her chin. Simply stating facts, of course. She’s barely fit to take care of herself, much less a smaller creature, dependent... though her pets and gaggle of hale and healthy creatures do seem to suggest she’s better at keeping them alive than herself.

“I think, if this woman were half the one I have come to know you as, then...anyone, would,” he says this part slowly, not quite looking away but not trying to meet her eyes either, “And I think Haurchefant would be a lucky man to ask your hand and have you give it. I think he is now, in fact. Do you not think he’d be a fair father?”

“I don’t even know what makes a good father, really, so I’d hardly be able to judge,” She scoffs, and quickly frowns when she sees his expression turn confused, “Viera don’t know their fathers really. I only met mine once. We didn’t particularly get on.” 

“Well, maybe someday you’ll get to know.” 

Something about his tone and the expressionless mask of his face pains her to experience, and she turns away. Looks to the Doman children and their games, to the slow bustling of everyone in the Stones. Anywhere but at Thancred. 

“Maybe. And maybe, in another life, it would be quite the happily ever after. But I don’t think fate favors such a thing for me. Nymeia weaves a future quite unfinished. I can feel myself caught in the stitching, with no space for an offshoot.” 

“You speak about Nymeia like you hate her, you know that? Like an old friend you cannot stand but feel indebted to visit.” He catches her phrasing with curiosity, almost seeming glad for a change of topic. She won’t lie, it brings her relief as well, and she settles calmer into her chair. 

“Do I?”

“Like she has caught you and made you a puppet without choice. Like a prisoner. But you also speak of her as if you want her to love you. It’s...odd.” He looks unsure at the idea that he isn’t just insulting her. She stifles a laugh. 

“I thought she spoke to me, once, when I was a girl,” she shrugs, tracing a finger around the rim of her mug, “Daughter of fate, I fancied myself. I chased her voice for answers, and when I got them, I realized I had tangled myself into a larger tapestry than I had planned. There was no returning to the threads I had left behind.”

“And you regret it?” He asks the question, but doesn’t seem to think it’s right, in itself. He’s waiting for her to explain, or to run, and curious of the outcome as always.

“Only in that I could have been someone else. Kinder, maybe. Lighter. Who knows, perhaps I’d have had a kit or two of my own by now. Or perhaps my home would have continued to rot, and I’d be just where I am now, without the benefit of the family I’ve made along the way. I was always meant to follow this path. The pain it held was simply...shaping the person I need to be to navigate it.” 

He seems...struck, by her phrasing, eyes wide and curious, but he doesn’t press the matter. Instead, he grabs his mug and moves to stand, casting a warm smile down at her. 

“Who we all could have been if life moved a little differently is the eternal question, but...I am glad to know you as you are. Maybe fate has kinder plans for you yet, Yldegarde.”

“And maybe this is the kinder plan, Waters.”


	4. Truthfully

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the wake of Ala Mhigo's liberation and Zenos' fall, Yldegarde consents to celebratory drinks with a friend, only to find that her friends have been meddling again, and she now has a very important opportunity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a hop skip jump to the end of Stormblood.

“Take me home?”  
————  
Like so many years ago, when Ylde wakes up holding her head and mourning the sun, Thancred is there. But this time he isn’t strewn across her floor in a drunken heap, safely asleep. No, this time he’s sitting beside her on her newly purchased real, genuine bed, one of her many quilts strewn over his very much clothed lap, looking at her as she wakes, the strangest expression of fascination and relief mixing on his tired features. 

“Oh, you’re awake, then. Would you mind terribly, ah...pinching me?” He manages with a thick voice, still syrupy from sleep and drink. 

When she stares at him, blinking exhaustion out of her eyes, he colors slightly, running a hand through loose, tangling hair. 

“A bad joke, I know. But I could almost swear it would have been a dream. This doesn’t seem real. You don’t...”

“I don’t seem real?” She almost slurs, and then swallows, chasing off the cottony feel of her throat. The world still feels swirling and soft and immaterial, but she’s not so sure that’s what he means. Particularly as it seems he’s been awake much longer than she has. 

“I know you’re real, of course, but I...” he seems at a loss for words, the strangest thing she’s seen in some time. 

“Do you need me to leave and give you time to gather your thoughts?” She yawns, and thinks it does a reasonably good job of hiding the flush to her cheeks. She can play nonchalant quite well when she puts her mind to it, though it is early, and she...she had hoped, maybe, that it didn’t have to be this way, again. She’s tired of it. She’d rather just get this over with. She frankly thought she had, when she walked into Lyrit’s house and saw the mischievous glint in her friend’s eyes, saw the flushed Hyur already fixed in place at the bar. No avoiding it then. No avoiding it now. 

“This is your room!” He sputters, and looks duly embarrassed by it. Smooth words and poetry, suddenly out of reach. Oddly enough, she does like him like this, stripped bare of grandiose displays and flowering statements. 

“It is also my house. Technically. I could walk into the kitchen, say hello to Luce, make breakfast, and you could...,” she pauses, pulling herself up to seated and tangling a hand in her unruly hair, swallowing down the disappointment, “Figure out what it is you seem to want from me.” 

She’s managed to untangle her legs from her blankets and put both feet firmly on the floor, ready to stand, before he answers her. Or, doesn’t answer, more accurately, but the hand on her wrist and the pleading look is well enough. 

“Don’t go, please. Not until I...until I say something a bit more intelligent.”

“Will I be here for a while then?” She muses with a half-hearted smile, which fades as she settles back into the cushiony mattress, pulling her old quilt over her shoulders. 

He looks at her, and at the quilt, the Fortemps crest emblazoned on it, and something in his eyes turns distant and cloudy. He clears his throat. 

“I just...this isn’t...,” he shakes his head, steadies for a moment before continuing, “This isn’t the first time I’ve woken up next to you remembering something that couldn’t have been real, and I suppose I am wondering if this will be like the last, and we’ll never speak of it again. Which, if it is, of course, I can oblige, but...if it isn’t, I...”

He flounders again, and she’s reached over and brushed a hand against his cheek before she realizes it, startling him into staring at her.

“Am I dreaming again?” He asks, quieter than she ever expected him to be. 

“No,” she musters a whisper back, and her other hand finds one of his where it is burrowing into the mattress, smoothing out the fist, before both retreat back to curl safely in her lap, “You’re not dreaming.” 

“Ah.” He breathes, and it is both relieved and pained, in its own way. 

“Forgive me for asking, but why do you...” She hears him start the question and stop abruptly, and watches him flush and keep his eyes averted, concealed. 

“Why do I love you?” She puts it as frankly as she can. It seems to jar him even more, and his eyes meet her in an instant, wide and surprised.

“You love me.” He says it like it’s the most dangerous thing in the world, and maybe it is. 

“I do,” she responds in kind, picking at a thread, “How much do you recall of last night? I can’t promise I can...repeat everything I said, not with the same words, but...the meaning would be the same, at least.” 

“You told me you loved me,” he answers, and the hand that she smoothed out reaches, falters and freezes, before pulling her right hand back out of her lap and lacing their fingers together with a fragile curiosity, “Which, I honestly can’t imagine why you would, but you did say it, and I’ve not known you to be a liar yet in our years of companionship.”

“Oh, so you weren’t listening past the big idea. How oddly expected.” She sighs, but the press of their palms is nice, the callouses he sports are different than her own. Different paths, different specialities, but something fits. 

“I was!,” he sputters, and frowns, “I listened, but I...”

“You don’t understand why I love you?” She pushes back her hair and ears away from her face with her free hand as she talks, a nervous gesture. She’d done away with the heavy bangs she’d sported for a time in her grief, hiding her eyes, her lack of sleep and furrowed brows, but they were still growing back out, and she needed...she needed him to see her face clearly, she supposed. With all its fresh and old scars, eyes more mismatched than ever before, all the exhaustion her features collected.

“I struggle with the concept, yes.” He’s quite frank about it, and the flush betrays his embarrassment. 

“Oh, you foolish man.” She smiles, then, and leans forward to press a kiss to his troubled brow. It’s an impulsive movement, and she’s barely registered she’s done it until she hears his sharp intake of breath, sees the shock naked on his features. 

“I suppose...I love you quite foolishly as well, though, so how can I fault you...,” she coughs, and bunches her shoulders, curls into her quilt for safety, “Why do I love you...oh, what a perilous thing it is to feel, much less explain... it was easier when I was drinking and you were a captive audience.”

“Am I not a captive audience now?” He asks, and lifts their hands to remind her of their lacing. She flushes, dipping her head to her chest. 

“You were drunk at the time. The risk was much lower.” She defends.

“And I’m not now, and I would prefer to hear it in a more reasonable state if possible. Risks be damned.” 

“You’re impossible,” She seethes, and squeezes his fingers for good measure, “Why do I love you?”

“Again, I believe that is my question.” 

“I...I love you, because...,” she sighs, and pulls herself back up to her full height, leveling him with an honest gaze, “You’re a foolish man. You overwork, you take everything as your responsibility when it isn’t, and you’re always fashionably late to things. You dress...ridiculously, and your idea of roughing it in the wilderness involves leather pants and a popped collar. You’re a vexing tease and a flirt and I’m fairly sure you could charm the pants off a Vault priest, and your real feelings are so hard to parse that it’s infuriating.”

He’s staring at her with utter bewilderment when she finishes her first breath. 

“Those actually don’t sound like reasons to enjoy my company, much less have anything resembling love in your heart.” He manages with a quiet sort of confusion and defeat. The expression is one of such regret that it aches, and her hand snakes out to hold his cheek, lean her further in, until they are eye to eye, inches apart. 

“If that’s what you think, you’d be quite incorrect. You’re...hm,” she leans until her forehead bumps against his, closes her eyes and hums the thought, “I love you, and have loved you, because you’re kind. You have always strived to improve yourself, to take on the world for those you cared for, to never give up a cause. Because you’re sweet, even in the playful ways, even when you’re utterly distracting and downright frustrating. Because you...”

She pauses, and bites her lip, resists the urge to open her eyes, to see how his face has changed in front of her. If it has. 

“Because you’ve never lied to me, or tried to be someone different to save face and make me like you more, I loved you. If you’re a fool, you’ve been a fool. If you’re grieving, you grieve. And...You’ve never forgotten who I really am. Never tried to make me something I’m not. Do things a different way, even if it might be better. The world wants many things from me and mine these days, and you’ve...never made me feel as if I had to be the hero. As if I had to shoulder the world alone, even if I did. Of course, you’ve tried to do it yourself, and that worries me, but...”

She trails off as she feels the rough press of fingertips to her jaw, pulling her face forward. Her eyes open in time to see him close in, to flutter back shut as his mouth meets hers greedily, hungrily. 

She feels consumed, perhaps that’s the right word for it. Not consumed in the way she’d once been, an object intended only for consumption, a dish to be devoured. Consumed gently, pulled in for more, with escape so easily in reach. Like someone starving.

He doesn’t taste like she remembers, five years past. And that is, perhaps, for the best. They’re different people than they were. But he tastes like stale liquor and something like the green tea cake Lyrit had the night before, the kind he had because she liked it, not altogether pleasant, but also...not unpleasant, either. 

“Gods, I’ve wanted to...ha,” he breathes into her mouth as he pulls away, “I’ve wanted to kiss you for six years.” 

“Technically you have before.” She murmurs without catching her breath, blinking at him with a tiny smile.

“I didn’t think that counted, Yldegarde.” He almost rolls his eyes at her, and she laughs, lets her face fall on his shoulder. 

“It counted, it was just...not the right time. The right way.”

“Hm, speaking of not the right way...might I?” He eyes her mouth again, the warm press of calloused thumb to her lower lip. 

“I...what, was the first attempt not good enough? I for one was pleased enough.” She teases, but pulls her head back up, smiling. 

“I don’t think any number of attempts would ever be perfect or enough, and I do have a lot of time spent...wanting, to compensate for.”

“Wanting, hm?” She breathes into the space, and sighs with no small amount of pleasure humming in her throat when he kisses her again. The bristling of his not-quite beard scrapes her chin, but she forgives it in exchange for the way he pulls her into the kiss, hands loosening on her own to push into her hair, or grip softly at her waist. Her fingers curl around the back of his neck, tangling in his hair easily. 

“Of course, wanting. I’ve said before I’m quite smitten with you. Of course, when I said that...” He nearly mumbles the words into her mouth, more breath than sound. 

“You were teasing with empty words, and I would never have believed you. I didn’t believe you, in fact,” she murmurs, and pulls back, looks him in the eyes, face flushed and all too honest, “A lot of times, I wished I could have believed you. But I suppose I just kept waiting on you to just...say it, and you didn’t, so I didn’t. But it’s too late now. Cats out the bag, so to speak.” 

“Say it?” He blinks at her, bewildered, marveling, and hungry. 

“How you, ah...Nymeia, this is humiliating,” she can’t look at him, preferring to stare at the canopy above their heads, the trinkets strung there, “How you...feel. About me. If, you feel about me, and this isn’t just some...fling, some passing fancy, and now that I’m allowing the taking, the challenge is gone.”

He looks horrified.

“Do you think so low of yourself to think I wanted you for the challenge?” 

“You wouldn’t have been the first, Thancred.” She sighs. 

“No,” he shakes his head, slides his hands up her arms to gently hold her shoulders in place, keep her upright and looking at him, “no, I would...I have been a bastard. I have definitely been less than a gentleman to a fair many young women, but...I would never pursue you for a challenge. For sport.”

She’s quiet, but she nods, folding her hands back into her lap to keep them from fretting at the ends of her rumpled clothes from the night before. When she says nothing more, something snaps in his expression, somber and pained and earnest as anything. 

“Yldegarde, I...,” the words are clearly not as easy as anything more superficial, and so she tries to keep patience, to stay quiet, “I don’t know that I’m nearly the man you think of me, but I want to be. I would very much like to be the sort of man who you deserve. The longer I know you, the more I want to be someone you could love, and that I am is the cruelest sort of mercy.  
“You’re so much...more than I am. A Warrior of Light, slayer of primals, revolutionary, prodigy, Starcaller, I...how could I ever compare? I have failed at the few things I once thought myself good at. I have failed those I love. How could I look at you and ask you to love me? How could I take you for myself, when there have been more worthy men than I? When there will always be more worthy men than I? I’m not nearly that selfish, nor as egotistical.” 

She stays silent as he speaks, watching the struggle in his eyes. Her hands have left her lap again, snaked out to press soft to the pulse points of each of his wrists where they have dropped to the space between them, feeling the rush of his heartbeat under her fingers. 

“I hate being called that, you know.” She whispers, “A warrior of light. I always have. It’s not me, it’s...” 

“I know,” he says, and he is so soft, so tired, “but that’s what everyone else sees. And I am the fool who was possessed by an Ascian, the fashionably late, the man who failed to save those he loved. I am the man who fails, constantly, and you are the woman who is indomitable, a storm made flesh, terrifying and beautiful and beloved. Beloved...” 

His voice shakes, and he doesn’t look at her anymore, just hangs his head, silence pulled taut. 

“Am I even allowed to love you?” He asks, simply, softly. 

“Yes.” She answers, firm, decisive. Patience pulled thin, and yearning burning a hole in her stomach. She smooths her palms on the sides of his face, pulls him ever so gently to look at her again, naked worry and sadness in his eyes. 

“No one owns me. No one sets restrictions on what I can want. Who I can want. Damn what anyone thinks, damn what Eorzea thinks I need to be to fit its mold, if it denies me...if it denies me one more thing out of duty, I will lose it,” she presses her lips to his cheek, “so be honest with me. Tell me or don’t, love me or don’t, want me and use me or keep me, but at least be honest. With me, and with yourself. Please, Thancred.”

The quiet draws forever, forever, and seconds. It feels like a void that pulls at her flesh, tries to drown her deep and ever. 

The only movement is the fingers that tilt her chin up, leveling their eyes. Hers are threatening to tear, to her despair, and his...they’re raw, and yearning, and the eternally unfamiliar familiar. 

“Yldegarde...Ylde. How I feel...I believe I have since perhaps the day we met, as heartily embarrassing and foreign as that is to say aloud, and you’ve never stopped being...everything you are. Mercurial and tempestuous and frustrating, genius and impulsive and surprising...Challenging, but a challenge I relish, one I crave.” Every word is issued like a secret, a piece of vital intelligence from spy to spy, the last words behind enemy lines. And maybe they are, and maybe this is, dangerous and foreign territory for them both, unfamiliar terrain. Fraught with every sort of dangerous thing, love was. 

“I let you go, when I came back to myself and found that you had met Haurchefant, and he was...he was good for you, wasn’t he, because you seemed so much more sure, so much more vibrant than I would have thought possible, when you were already...a sun, the moon, everything. Because you were happy, and I could not contend with that, I could not...bear to think myself worth the effort, after how gloriously I had mucked things up, put everyone, put you, in danger by failing to accept my failings. I let you go, the...idea of you, and I, and something, go, and I tried to pretend that I had the right to let you do anything at all. Conceited of me, I know.” 

Each word is pressed into being with his rough, strangely comforting hands, cradling her face and pulling her in, to breathe in the in-between. 

“I love you.” He says in ragged tones, and the world drones out of focus, caught between the rapid beating of her heart, the ringing in her ears like the aftermath of an explosion.   
When he pulls her in this time, she feels her spine melt, curling her arms around him, tangling hands in his hair, still much too long and somehow much too soft. Knocks him over into the pile of pillows on her bed, laughing and hoarse and near-hysterical. 

“I love you.” Whispered into her throat, her hair, just below her ear. A dozen times, like a bottle shaken and uncorked, and every time is sweeter, softer, more desperate. 

“I love you.” Breathed life into against his jaw, under each eye, the tender flesh below that stupid, stupid choker. It feels like a hundred times, but it couldn’t be, even saved up for years. 

“I love you.” And it is, miraculously, enough, despite being so late.


	5. And of the After?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post-confession hugs from your best friends are the way to go when things are finally looking up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feat. Khiiral Lumoira and M'oe Shi, the other two Warriors of Light in this canon! They're lovely boys who Ylde loves like brothers. M'oe belongs, again, to Kokuou-ji, while Khiiral belongs to our best friend.

It takes approximately four hours for it to become exceedingly, absurdly apparent that something has shifted in Yldegarde. 

Perhaps the time is accounted for the fact that she doesn’t leave her room until much later in the day than ordinary, and when she does, she’s very much still in her clothes from the day before. A hangover, perhaps, is the idea, though it doesn’t account for the spring in her step, the brightness in her eyes as she steals away from the kitchen with a plate of sandwiches and the good tea kettle. 

And perhaps the time after that is explained away by the door left mildly ajar, the faint hum of muffled laughter floating as a specter down the long hall. It has been so long since anyone heard her laugh like that, or even at all, or leave her door in any sort of in-between. It has either been wide open to the empty disuse, or closed but never locked, for need and for care. 

Certainly, however, it becomes extremely transparent in nature as she sees Thancred off at the door, a parting that seems to take quite a bit more time than reasonable. Neither seem to want to let go of each other’s hand to depart, despite repeated muttering about having obligations and unfortunate plans. There are witnesses for this, at least, undeniably so. 

And when the door shuts at last, and Ylde’s back hits it, sliding down slightly in an uncharacteristically whimsical sigh, it becomes all the more undeniable that one particular witness has been biding his time. 

“Oh, M’oe, I didn’t see you th-“ she manages before seeing the relatively feral dilation of his pupils, not unlike a couerl kitten tracking a ball of twine. 

“Yldegarde Kolfrid, did Thancred Waters just walk out of our house?” He interrogates, though the seriousness of his expression conflicts heavily with the enthusiasm of his tone.   
She blinks, and shrugs, straightening up from the door and pulling down her rumpled shirt. 

“Barring the idea that I’ve been cruelly deceived somehow, then yes, that was in fact our dear colleague Master Waters.” 

Her rascal of a Mi’qote friend has climbed onto the banister of the basement stairs at this point, swinging one leg free while the other supports his chin as he leans forward with curiosity.

“And why was he here, hm? I’d think if he wanted to conscript us for something the Scions required he wouldn’t have snuck in and snuck out.” He about croons the insinuation, and she flushes, shakes her head quickly. 

“He did not sneak in or out, I escorted him completely without the cover of secrecy this time!” 

Her friends’ eyebrows are cocked, curious and stubborn, and she sighs. 

“Oh, just ask if you’re going to ask, M’oe, you’re never this indirect.”

“Did you finally get that man in bed or what?,” He whispers conspiratorially, “Khiiral will be so disappointed but frankly, we all figured-“

Ylde isn’t quite sure she can blush much more intensely, and feels the bluster of denial and panic rise up in her chest. 

“No! Well. Yes, but not in the traditional sense, he did Sleep here, but we didn’t...no.”

“Ylde, again?” He sighs and drapes himself over the banister with the keen balance of a practiced gymnast combined with the dramatic flair of an absolute wretch. 

She rolls her eyes, and raps her nails against her chin in faux-thought before offering a dismissive hand wave. 

“Well, I may not have gotten that particular satisfaction last night, which was for the best, we were both quite drunk, but I did tell him I was in love with him, so-“ she doesn’t get to finish her sentence before strong, solid arms are wrapped right around her waist in a hug tighter than a snake’s grasp and her feet are promptly no longer on the ground. He knocks the wind out of her, and she wheezes into the hug while he laughs, beaming. 

“You told him!! I’m so proud of you!” He nearly yells in his enthusiasm. He does yell, by anyone else’s standards, but because it is M’oe, it isn’t quite a Yell. Real yelling would be much more impressive. 

“What did you say?? What did he say? Do I have to be mad at him? What happens next, when-,” M’oe stops, blinks, looking at her owlishly behind maddeningly long lashes, “You can’t breathe, can you?”

“No, you’re crushing my ribs.” She wheezes. 

He loosens his grasp incrementally until her toes can hit the floor again, and her spine makes an audible crack. 

Mercifully, he grants her a moment to catch her breath, push hands against her spine to straighten out. 

“So??” He repeats, tapping his foot on the ground impatiently, but all in good cheer. 

“As I said, silly cat, I told him I was in love with him. He didn’t understand Why I would be, which is both endearing and rather depressing, but I did explain myself.” She waves her hand around, talking for all the world like it was quite the inconsequential thing. But the brightness in her eyes and the curl of her lip betrays the good cheer. 

“Ylde I will absolutely riot if you don’t tell me what he said. I will burn something down. It will likely be something that belongs to Glacius.” M’oe responds with certainty and stubbornness. 

“Hm? Oh, that. Silly me,” she grins at him, cheeks flushed and eyes warm, “He told me he loved me too.”

“Yes!!!!” M’oe jumps about two feet in the air, punching at the ceiling with vigorous enthusiasm before coming down and gathering her up in another spine-snapping hug. This time, at least, she is prepared, and squeezes back with good cheer. 

“Are we celebrating something?” She hears from over the hooting of her smaller friend, and by chance glances up to see Khiiral hovering by the door, fresh in from the garden by the looks of the dirt smudged across his deep gray cheek. 

“Ylde and Thancred are in love and not being stupid about it anymore!!” M’oe beams at his husband, and Ylde offers a weak smile. 

“Oh, gross.” Khiiral winces instead, “Not that dumbass. He’s so...Thancred.”

“Yes, that dumbass.” She replies airily from her cat-enhanced vantage point, “I’m very fond of him as you well know.” 

“Don’t remind me!” Her oldest friend whines, but there’s a bit of a smile there too, and he pats her shoulder with a dirty hand as he passes around them. The gesture is a familiar one, an ‘I don’t understand your choices but I am glad you’re happy’ that they’d perfected for many years now. It means quite a bit more in practice than perhaps any words could.   
“Don’t be mean! We’re being supportive of love!” M’oe scolds, but grins when his husband leans down to press a slightly muddy kiss to his cheek instead. 

“Of course we are, of course,” Trails after the Duskwight as he heads back towards the hallway, “I’ll be sure to send ol’ man needs-a-nap my sincerest congratulations on playing way out of his league in an incredibly non-threatening way.” 

M’oe huffs, but Ylde laughs, shaking her head. 

“That’s about as close to a blessing as we’re ever going to get.” She chuckles as M’oe lets her back down once more. 

“I feel like he dislikes Thancred for the sheer novelty of it, sometimes.” M’oe sighs. 

“Oh, no, not the novelty. If there’s anything you can count on, it’s the sun rising, Hydaelyn turning, and Khiiral finding something new about Thancred to dislike. I’ve just handed him a gift, basically. He has something new and easy to complain about, he loves that.” 

He snorts at that. 

“So what’s next! What’s happening next, are you dating, is he going to move in here, what?” 

“Oh I figured I’d skip straight from confessing and having our first not-drunk kiss to asking him to marry me and popping out a few kits, retiring immediately from this Warrior of Light business and leaving it to you and Khiiral to figure out, that sort of thing,” she says dryly with a wink and a smirk, “I don’t know? We’re taking things slow. Neither of us figured this would ever actually happen, you know?”

“Ylde, you’ve been in love with that man for six years.” M’oe matches her for dryness in his reply, stepping back to cross his arms. 

“That’s patently incorrect. For two of those years I was otherwise engaged.” 

“Ylde!” He grumbles, but it lacks bite. 

“I know, I know,” she sighs, “But this is new. Painfully, absurdly new, and we’re both...neither of us is Good at this, by any means, so...I think we’ll figure it out as we go? But you’ll likely see more of him.” 

“You should look into soundproofing your room. There’s some spells in that book I brought home a while ago, and-“ he’s rattled off the thought before she can slap a hand over his mouth, burning red in her cheeks. 

“We are super, super not having this conversation, M’oe, but thank you for your concerns.” 

“Lame,” he sticks his tongue out at her with a smile, and then brightens, “Muffins! I have to go get congratulatory muffins!”

“What?” She croaks, startled out of her embarrassment. 

“I brought you muffins last time, remember? So I should get muffins again. Oh, and there’s flowers here, from Lyrit. I think? They were here this morning and no one knew why. The card is illegible but it feels like it would be him-“ he rambles as he wanders off to the kitchen, tail wildly waving with his enthusiasm. 

She sinks into the couch, breathing out a sigh of relief, before assessing the flowers in question. A few half dozen lavender and white blooms, tied off with a black ribbon. Simple, smart, economical, but still very kind. And presumptuous, not that Lyrit was wrong, but the thought remained that he was rather overly sure of himself and his mischievous matchmaking trap...

She grins, and closes her eyes, taking a deep breath. 

What an odd thing it was, to be loved.


	6. Tentative

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Short, sweet, and kind of a tease-fest.

“May I?” Thancred asks from just below her chin, eyes cast to meet hers, mischievous and sweet. 

“Must you always ask?” She laughs as she bends to meet him, humming contentedly into the kiss. 

“Well, you do have to bend,” he rationalizes into their mingled breath, fingers tracing delicately along her jawline with that ever-present look of wonder, “For all I am to know, one of these days you’ll come to your senses and choose not to, save your spine the hassle.” 

She scoffs at that, laughter filling her lungs, until she sees the cast of shadowy worry across his fine features, the sincerity of his statements.

“Do you really think I’ve just gone out of my senses? Do you think me mad?” She whispers, letting her hands drop to entwine their fingers, lead him in closer to her, until her hips bump his torso and his chin is level with her clavicle. He presses another kiss there in the bend before he speaks, and she feels her heart leap into her throat to meet his touch, to flutter madly there. Oh, she is pitifully, ridiculously in love, isn’t she? The way that only fools are. The way she wasn’t sure she would earn. 

And perhaps she hadn’t quite earned it. The work of it was hard, the absences, the worry, the moments stolen and barely there. And then...there was the doubt. His, and hers, and every bit of it. 

“Oh, no, I’ve been certain of your particular flavor of madness since we met, you made it quite clear from the first.” He laughs, and lifts up one set of their twined hands, turning them slowly to watch. She doesn’t disappear when the dappled sunlight catches on the various shiny strands of her sleeve, and he sighs with some sort of relief, brings her hand to rest against his chest. 

“Thancred, I love you.” she returns the sigh, and delicately untangles the fingers of their other hands to place his at her waist, bringing up her own to hold his cheek. He leans into the gesture, fingers solid on her hip, cheek soft and warm under her hand, and she almost purrs.

“And I never tire of you saying so.” He replies, and turns his head to press a kiss to her palm. 

“Foolish, ridiculous man. I love you,” she restates, and has to hold her head high and steady when he gazes back at her with heavy-lidded eyes, the softest of smiles curled into his mouth, “And I’ve chosen to love you. Which means I’ve chosen you. Fully-informed, I should think, of the risks, rewards, and trials. So I’ll bend.”

To illustrate her point, she captures him in another kiss, swallows down the sound of surprise that melts into a bit of pleasure that he makes as she does, while he presses closer to her.

“And bend.” She trails her kisses off, to his cheek, gentle and light and soft. Somehow, those are always the worst, the ones that replace his spine with steel and turn his breaths to gasping, yearning. 

“And bend.” She whispers against his ear, and nearly smirks at the tightening grip on her hip as his fingers dig into the exposed flesh there. She holds steady, listening, the stutter of his heartbeat so close to hers, before pressing one more, rather chaste kiss behind his ear and straightening up.

“Does that illustrate my point, do you think?,” she taps a finger to her chin, all false confidence and bravado she’s learned from the best, “Neither of us can promise the other a forever, tragic reality and unfortunate history suggests that I could lose you at any moment when a new threat proves too great, or one mistake, one false step, costs dearly. But I would choose to relish in the now, the very hard work and the greedy grasping of it all, if I might.”

To risk the poetry, she muses, there are nearly stars in his eyes, consumed by the mix of want and mystified bright. 

“So, no sudden return to senses on the horizon? I shouldn’t be concerned about the safety of my things in your bureau? The slightly nicer pillow in your bed?” 

“You’re so stupid,” she giggles, and presses a kiss to his nose, smiling into the flush of his cheeks, “No, your spare trousers are safe. I’m so glad that that’s your priority, and not the inherent tragedy of living.” 

“Of course,” the ensuing kiss is quick, furtive, and all too soon ended, but the satisfaction curling across Thancred’s face lingers far after, “It made you smile, didn’t it? And what a worthy hit to my pride that is. A much better use of my time than contemplating unavoidable disaster.”


	7. Tease

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As a scientist and generally curious rabbit, Yldegarde absolutely has to test Thancred's boasts about holding his breath. And, what's more, give fair return on his teasing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning! This is a very smutty chapter that gets somewhat sad at the end. This is an unfortunate trend of mine.

“Is it... Does it kill the mood if I mention I’ve been really, really wanting to test your boast about holding your breath for so long for a bit now?” Ylde rasps as her nails dig into the silk of her canopy bed, nearly tearing the delicate fabric and most certainly creating unfortunate rippled runs. The statement bubbles its way up to the surface, and as her mouth is woefully unoccupied, bursts into being despite her more reasonable options of silence and rational thought. 

The man below her clearly does not answer, is incapable of providing an answer that isn’t a languid, lush sweep of his tongue, which would be indecipherable from the others regardless, but she does feel him chuckle slightly, his hands on her thighs, holding her as she shakes, tighten just so. Fingers tap along the flesh of her hip, a staccato beat of ‘no, not ruined’ if she ever did interpret it. She has to try hard not to cry as he presses a soft kiss to her inner thigh and resumes his work. 

“I’m, I’m- fuck!” She whines as that hand bears down on her thigh, holding her in place as he changes his form, suckling here, pushing his tongue flat and rough there. All slow, painfully slow, curled and careful. She knows he’s being purposefully vexing now, as he speeds up, deliberate and deep rather than lazy and slow. The pad of his thumb brushes against her when his tongue ventures elsewhere, flat and then curling, quick, murderously solid and kind alongside his tasting. 

“I absolutely loathe you and if you stop now I will utterly destroy you.” She wheezes instead, shivering. Her hands abandon the canopy as she shakes, burying themselves in his hair as it fans out on her pillow instead. He responds to the tug at his scalp with what almost feels like a laugh, and if she looks down she can clearly see the way his eyes crinkle at the edges, amused. 

“Th-Than- _THANCRED!_ ” 

It hits like a meteor crash, (and she would know, as a black mage) and she bites down hard on her lip to quell the wail that threatens to break free. Her bones feeling less than solid, she collapses on her side beside him, shimmies down to rest her head on his chest and stare half-lidded and gasping at his face, seemingly unperturbed by his extended timeframe without much oxygen. So, he hadn’t been kidding, clear enough from their salty swim in the Lochs, but all the more impressive for the exertion. Her theory was tested, and he did not disappoint...not that she thought he would .

She can’t think clearly enough to wonder if those stars in his eyes are reflecting her own, or if he got off on that as much as she did. She’s too distracted by the slow, measured way he licks his lips, all too familiar swipes of his tongue down his fingers. 

“And what a privilege that would have been.” He chuckles, wrapping an arm around her back to hold her steady as she breathes heavy and disjointed into his neck. 

“Mm?” She huffs, trying and failing to brace herself up to look at him properly. He laughs. 

“I’d have let you destroy me. I’m only slightly disappointed I didn’t get the privilege.” 

“Is that...is that a challenge, Waters? What do you even think I meant? For all you know-“ 

“Do you see it as a challenge, darling Yldegarde, or an invitation?” He cuts her off, sly grin working over tired features.

She sees it as both, if she is being honest, but she’s still huffing and settling, curling her fingers into his hair. He hasn’t cut it yet, but he’s mentioned the idea, the plan. It gets in the way. It was never a long-term arrangement. She’ll miss it when it’s gone, she thinks. So she runs her hands through it often now, when it is untied and loose for her. Silken and soft and easily tangled. He has yet to complain of her fixation. 

The moment passes in comfortable silence, as her heartbeat returns to normal and her breathing evens, cool air against his torso. His hand traces spirals across her shoulders, light and distracted. He’s closed his eyes, satisfied and smirking at a job well done, a tease completed, which affords her the lovely opportunity to slink her hand down the expanse of his stomach, hover dangerously at the waistband of his trousers where he’s been softening. The moment her claw-like nails brush the skin above the band, she feels him shudder, watches him open his eyes and look at her, move his hands to aid in her attentions. 

“No.” She murmurs hotly against his throat, and reaches up with a free hand to loosen the scarf from her hair, contemplating it in her fingers for a moment before running it through her teeth and tearing the delicate fabric in two. The rip startles him, she sees his pupils blow wide as the moon, watching her with curiosity and a sort of hunger.

“Trust me?” She whispers as she rolls to sit up, winding the scarf around her hands. 

“With my life.” Thancred nods almost violently, holding out his wrists for her attention without hesitation. She winds the scarf around each wrist, just tight enough to hold. and ties it in a neat bow. 

“Now, don’t tear it.” She soothes, and watches his eyebrows quirk in disbelief.

“You just tore it in two!” He laughs, but there’s fun in it, not much argument. 

“And I had good reason,” she holds up the second strip, gesturing gently, “Can I trust you to close your eyes, or do we need to cover them both for once?” 

“Why do I need to close my eyes? Am I not allowed to watch?” He looks amused, but flutters his eyelashes at her as he closes them anyway. 

“Because I won’t have you mooning at me while I do this, Thancred, and that’s that.” She laughs, but his eyes stay closed despite the obvious roll. 

“I do not moon-“ he starts to argue with her before going shock still at the kiss she presses to each of his hipbones and right above his waistband, quickly returning to attention where it had begun to soften, smirking into the soft trail of hair there. She chuckles into the bare flesh as she drags the band the rest of the way, discards his pants in a shimmying motion around his ankles for him to kick off. 

When she looks, his eyes are closed, but the effort of it is clear in bunched eyebrows and fixed jaw. So she uses the shredded scarf to tie her hair back again instead, out of her eyes, and continues. The next kiss is lower, and it trails along the length of him in time with the drag of fingernails up the underside. He twitches. Breath goes rougher, rougher, and his teeth grit. But he keeps his eyes shut. He’s willing to play the game. The few, delicate nips at the vulnerable flesh of his inner thighs elicits moans, the dig of his hips into the mattress, the rustle of twisting fabric as he braces himself on the pillows.

She takes him into her mouth fairly easily, though she’d never say as much in any disparaging tone. It wasn’t that he wasn’t satisfying, he certainly, certainly was. None would simply ever argue she didn’t have practice on her side, even if that practice was years past and she’d certainly had time to redevelop a gag reflex. It wasn’t as if Haurchefant was overly interested in the receiving end, when they had been together. He had been a giver, through and through, and she was glad for that. It had been what she needed, then.   
But it’s not too hard.

Well. It is Very hard, but in a very different fashion, and she can almost taste the rapid change in his pulse, the rush of blood in his veins, before she hears him exhale like he is absolutely declaring defeat. Her eyes track him through thick lashes, watch his mouth fall open as she bobs, expression turning to more and more effort as she goes.   
When she feels his hands tangle in the hair on her scalp she startles, almost letting him pop free before regaining her composure and taking him back. It was easier that way, honestly, to guess, as he bucks his hips so, so frantically with her bobbing, nails scraping against her scalp, pulling at her hair. He’s so, so close...she can feel it in the desperate pull, the ragged, broken breaths, the muffled hum of her name. The way he tries to thrust back into her mouth. 

“Y...yld...eeeee...” is the sigh, the absolute keen that emits as she takes him to the root, as he nearly yanks on her hair. Seconds, maybe, seconds until he’s finished, and she’s returned her favor. She can feel him twitch. 

So she stops. Licks gently when she rises up, a kiss to the weeping, flushed head, before sitting up and shuffling. He makes a sound best described as a desperate, feral whine, caught in the throat of an animal, and shivers at the sudden chill, but he’s still laying prone, still easy, even as his hands release her hair and fall back onto the pillow, twisting in their makeshift bind. 

He doesn’t open his eyes until she’s already slipped to match their hips, press him against her, but not in. It’s the first, gentle, so slow rock that shoots his eyes open instead. And how his pupils have so overtaken both colors, wide and starving over the flush on his cheeks, the mouth that won’t, can’t close properly now. It’s almost too easy, to move in the most deliberate, horrifically slow way. She doesn’t imagine he’ll still last long, of course, but...she hopes that she can at least have her fun with it before he’s spent. 

“Oh.” He manages through garbled groans. The syllable barely sounds real, more something echoed across canyons. 

“What?” She whispers into his mouth, capturing him for a kiss, “Are not used to being the center of attention like this?”

He wheezes as she rises, slightly, leaves him exposed to the relative chill of the air, and then rocks their hips back together. 

“Yldegahhhhh, oh, _oh_ ,” his voice breaks on her name, and she doesn’t deny that it curls a sort of heat back into her belly as he looks so vulnerable, so flushed, staring up at her, “Let me...let me...”

“Let you what?” She breathes against his collarbone, slowing for a moment. She can hear him sound like he’s mumbling nonsense from where she is, and presses her kisses there, her teeth into soft flesh.

The sudden shuffle, careful not to disturb her ears, and then the weight of his hands, still in their bow, settling down on the center of her back to hold her in place, to provoke her to move, startles her into a laugh that becomes a moan. He’s holding her down, and encouraging a faster pace, his wrists struggling against the scarf in pantomime of effort. She knows he can get out of the knot. It barely is a knot in the first place. That he’s choosing not to suggests, instead, that there is at least some enjoyment in the idea of being restrained from taking what he wants from her.

So she consents, digs her thighs into his hips and drags her nails down his chest, sensitive, flushed thing that it is.

“Do you want to, to...?” She stutters as his bound hands push themselves down, gripping at her bottom, nails dug in for leverage. His response does not fall under the vicinity of being actual words, closer to garbled obscenities and tangled breaths. So she shrugs, and maintains her course, makes her movements heavy and deliberate and hearty. If she hits that spot quick enough, careful enough, more and more heat pools into her belly, begging for that end. So she does, best that she can, feels his shudder as the head hits her over and over, sloppy, burdensome, begging for something. Something more.

He’s done in with a shout before she is, finishing sticky and warm across his own belly, against her core, as she restrains a giggle. She’s not too far behind, shuddering and heaving with the sudden starlight, heavy and broken sobs as she braces herself next to his shoulders. She can’t open her eyes back up for a breath, two, trying desperately to put her heart back into her chest where it belonged.

But when she can, he’s looking at her, panting, red-faced and marveling. 

“So that’s why they’re so k-keen on calling you an avatar of destruction in Ul'dah, hm?” He whistles through his teeth, grasping desperately at breath. 

“It most certainly is Not.” She grits out in embarrassed fury, slumping to dig her head into his neck. Where she can’t see his stupid, handsome face. 

“No? You destroyed me, as promised.”

“You’re still...you absolute tart...” her breath is coming back, the panicked thumping of her heart cooling as she remains leaning over him, shivering. 

“I can assure you, Ylde,” he whispers into her ear, before she feels strips of silk slide off her hip and to the bed, his newly freed hands grip her waist and gently push her over, where she can curl up in peace, “I’m quite ruined.” 

She huffs a laugh as he shakily sits up, observing the mess of his front with a sigh. She waves a hand vaguely in the direction of her nightstand, and he rummages for a moment before surfacing with both a towel and...something else. 

“Not what you think,” she sighs into her arm, watching him turn the old ring in his fingers, “Edmont gave it to me after. Said I would always be family. As if that somehow...wouldn’t hurt more.”

“I’m sorry.” Thancred whispers, and deposits the old ring back in the drawer with the slightest clink. He averts his eyes as he cleans them both off, before delicately folding the towel back up and placing it on the end of her bed. 

“It’s alright. I’m...Edmont is very kind to me. Perhaps the closest to a father I’ve ever had. But I’m not moving to Ishgard, and I can’t marry his son. And the live ones are certainly not on the agenda. So the ring stays where it is.” 

“I suppose it would be quite awkward to ask poor Edmont to walk you down the aisle now anyway.” He muses, before coloring, looking ashamed of himself for the joking nature of the comment. He doesn’t see her flush, watch her catch her laugh in her hands.

“I’m not sure what aisle he’d be walking me down, as last I checked, I wasn’t planning a wedding.” She chuckles, and reaches for him, pulls his hand to her face and bids the rest of him follow. He does, and they lay a breath away, nose to nose. 

“I think...I prefer promises to ceremony, anyway,” she murmurs, and presses a kiss to his nose, “if you stay with me, stay with me. I don’t need witnesses. Not even gods.”

“A shame. I think the finery would suit you.” He smiles against her mouth, and it’s a miserable thing, soft and sad. 

“Maybe, but, someone would have to ask. And I’d have to answer. And then there’s all the planning...such a hassle. I already did my part for Khiiral and M’oe, I’m not emotionally prepared for a repeat any time soon.” She responds, and her eyes are tired, staring back at his, filled with fathoms of ghosts and regrets. 

“I can’t.” She almost can’t hear him say the words, but she can see them ghost across his lips, a breath of a sigh. He can’t ask her. He can’t justify it to himself, that sort of selfishness, that sort of implied happiness, solidity. She knows. She knows. She doesn’t want him to. 

“Overrated,” she continues, letting him chase away the fog of his own mind, “and I already have what counts. What I want.”

He blinks at her, dark cloud moving slow, before his eyes clear, and crinkle at the edges with the smile. 

“I love you.” He presses the words into her cheek with a kiss, pulling her quilt over them carefully as the sunlight starts to filter in through the window.

“Oh, I know.” She laughs, and wraps her arms around him, pulls him in close.

“And I love you.”


	8. Mo(u)rning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (I'm hilarious, what are you talking about.) Loving someone when they can't quite love themselves is its own sort of quest, don't you think?

Ylde sits in the reading nook off the kitchen, nursing a cup of steaming chamomile and trying to desperately rake her hair back into the messy bun she’d constructed when she hears the footsteps on the stairs. They’re deliberate, really, carefully placed to make noise and creak the steps, and it’s no surprise when she sees the disheveled cloud of tangled ash pop up over the banister, followed by bleary warm eyes and confused, tired eyebrows quirked in the slightest, most imperceptible relief. It’s clear that he’s woken to find her gone, and her heart sinks with the guilt before the softest smile works over his lips. 

“I thought I’d find you here.” He stage-whispers as he drags a barstool over, leans onto the nook by his elbows. The fact that he doesn’t climb in with her is actually...as equally disappointing as it is a relief. He’s allowing her to set the bounds, something she has yet to take for granted. She’s not sure what she expected from Thancred Waters, with whom the parameters of their specific dalliances are barely defined, but this...is something else. 

“I’m sorry, I suppose I just…woke up, and couldn’t fall back asleep.” She shrugs from her perch among the pillows, one shoulder pressed hard to the stained glass window. If she squints, she can still see the stars out of it. The strain is usually worth it, the spun sugar light of constellations through violet and blue and frosty white. It reminds her of another place, another time, another fretful morning. 

“Far be it from me to judge insomnia, love,” He yawns, and in a softer voice, tilts his head just so, “You could have woken me.” 

“And ruin such peaceful sleep? You never rest, Thancred. I’d not ruin your first sober time sleeping over by disrupting you.” She snorts, rolls her eyes as she takes a sip of her tea. 

There is an absurd amount of honey and mint packed into her mug, and still, it doesn’t quite help the taste. She’s never been fond of chamomile, preferring something mulled or spiced, but chamomile is good for sleep. It is good for worry, too, she hears as much from Luce, but as much as she respects the ivory and gold Raen, determined to be of help and be kind, she pretends not to hear that bit. Acknowledging her tendency towards fretting and sorrow would be too much to bear, particularly to the sweet, motherly face of her friend.

“It was quite peaceable, true, until I chanced to reach out a hand and find my dear sleeping companion gone and the bed quite cold indeed.”

“This is Ul’dah, Thancred. There is no conceivable way my bed was cold, and with the fire…” she argues for the sake of it, the humor, and watches his expression turn exasperated-fond with comfort. 

“Darling, stubborn, cruel Yldegarde, anywhere without you is cold.” He soothes in that unapproachable, charismatic lean, the sort of man she’d met all those years ago. The sort of voice that had caused swooning fits in dear, impressionable Ul’dahn girls, she’d seen it often enough. But here it is laughable, sweet and stupid. She knows better now. Maybe she always did.

“You’re so very lucky you’re unreasonably handsome and I am weak to fits of poetry.” Her sigh is coupled with a grin, the shine of sharp canines in flickering lamplight. 

“Oh, I’m lucky in a thousand ways, I’m sure. But I am most certainly prone to, ah…’fits of poetry’.” He chuckles, and takes the hand she offers, pulling himself into the nook with ease. She folds her legs over top of his lap, but otherwise stays, still and considering. 

He holds his hands out, and she places her mug in them, letting him take a sip. He makes a face, caught between regret and disgust, and she stifles the laugh, taking the cup back.

“That is...that is more honey than it is tea. I thought you didn’t even like sweets that much.” He coughs, trying to clear the over-sweet mess from his throat, drumming one fist over his bare chest like clearing a fog. 

“I don’t like or dislike sweets. I like making them, but they’re too cloying usually, I prefer...savory. Salt and spice and depth. Smoke! Smoke is good,” she takes another sip of her heinous concoction, wincing. It has started to cool, and will soon be past the point of undrinkable, but she can’t make herself drink it any faster, “but supposedly, chamomile helps sleep, and I hate chamomile tea more than I am apathetic to sweet things, so I abused our honey stores. I’m sure Okko will complain of the waste, but it does give her something to do...” 

He looks like he considers that for a moment, before nodding, an understanding undertaken. 

“And what brings such poor rest tonight that we fall upon such dire methods?” He offers instead, and lets his hand fall upon her knee, tracing soft circles into the exposed skin, “Am I such a poor bed companion? I hope I don’t snore.” 

“No, you don’t...you don’t snore.” She laughs, catching the sound behind her hand. 

“I’m...some nights, I can’t...” she fumbles over her words, wrapping her arms tight around her waist where ink curls and frames under thin chemise, reminds her of her solidity, “Some nights I...I wake up suffocating, and I had already pulled loose before I realized I was...fine. But I was already...I couldn’t...bring myself to climb back in and risk disturbing you. And I was much too awake, so I figured I would...try the chamomile. A last ditch effort before I went for the wine cellar or simply accepted the morn.” 

Something in his face changes as she talks, as she watches shadows cloud his eyes and his mouth pull tight. He doesn’t say it, but she can feel the question in the silence, pulled taut like the thread of a spinning wheel. 

“I have nightmares. It’s simple, really, just...it happens. They’re particularly vivid, which I can probably thank Hydaelyn for, among her other unasked for gifts. Everything is always too vivid.” she shrugs, and pushes her glasses back up her nose from where they’ve fallen. As if noticing them for the first time, Thancred blinks, tilting his head in an openly curious gesture. 

“I didn’t realize being a warrior of light had left you visually impaired.” Is the joke that isn’t quite funny, but is sweet nonetheless, giving her an out from her clear discomfort.

“Oh, don’t you know? It’s like that old wives tale, stare into the sun for too long and you go blind? You stare at Hydaelyn for too long and the glint off her edges wrecks your depth perception,” She all but snorts, before pulling the lenses off her face and handing them over for his observation, “no, these are my own fault, they came with the eye. I was too...I was distraught after the crystal tower, and too curious for my own good, with that look into the dark...I paid the fair price for a glimpse into the unknown. Clouds and details lost are mild, all considered.” 

“I did always mean to ask about that.“

“Liar,” she smiles, and it’s only slightly sad, “you knew well enough that night I stumbled back into the Stones, and it’s why you didn’t ask. You’re not half as stupid as you play.”   
“No, I suppose I’m not,” he answers kindly, before offering a hand that she takes easily, holding them joined to his heart.

“I may have guessed, and my only real concern was...whether it caused you harm, and if it would continue. It seems to have done neither, though I’m hardly an expert.”  
She shrugs and shifts, scoots over to his side of the nook and fixes him with a wry smile before resting her head upon his shoulder. Closes her eyes, choosing her words carefully.   
“Harm is very subjective.”

“Ylde...” she feels his sigh ruffle the hair around her ears. 

“Don’t worry, love, I’ve learned that lesson. I’m unlikely to go gazing again, at least not without a plan.”

“What do you dream about?” He asks, slow and soft, and it is another exit offered. She could always talk about kinder dreams. She could tell him she dreamed about him. And it would be true- she did dream about him rather often. But it also isn’t what he’s asking. 

“Do you remember when I said, I thought Nymeia talked to me when I was a girl?,” she starts slowly, curling fist against his chest, feeling the heartbeat there, steady and warm, “That’s...more or less not true. I didn’t hear anything, I just...felt it. Clear as I feel your heart now. Closing in around me, calling. And I didn’t have a name for it until I came to Eorzea, you know? We didn’t have...we didn’t worship the twelve. We just had the Word, and it was law, and it had no face. But they gave fate a face here, they give faith a face here...it’s easier this way. I understand why. I understand what Baelsar meant, too. A face is a dangerous thing for faith to have.”

She can almost feel the frown as his mood shifts, concern blossoming in the pre-morning light. The sunrise would chase her resolve, she knows that. So she speaks, and keeps her palm pressed over the even beat of his heart, soothing and strong. 

“They asked me who I most revered, when I came to Ul’dah, and I chose Nymeia because she was fate, and she was unkind. That’s how I’d always seen it. I could put a name to the thing that called my name and whispered in the darkest moments. It was helpful. I was very angry, when I first came to Eorzea. It was good to have somewhere to put that anger. Someone to be angry with.” 

“And then I met so many people who were bound to their fates, who seemed to even Want that, to embrace it, feel made whole by it, even if it took everything from them, and I...I simply felt trapped. I feel trapped, still. In this skin, in this life. A champion of Hydaelyn, but I don’t think...” She can’t seem to form the words she wants. Her mind is awash with faces, friends, accepting something ancient and powerful and all-consuming into their lives simply by the grace of fate. Watching it take them away, more often than not. Living with their loss, even while trying to understand their Choice. Was it even choice? It was so hard to tell... 

“You wouldn’t have chosen it, if you’d been able to choose at all.” He finishes for her, sounding all the more like he’s fading away, gone somewhere far away even as his body is warm and solid against her. She knows he’s seeing faces too. Some of them, even the same. One in particular, as always, as ever. 

“If my beloveds had still been held to it? I would have accepted it. I would not abandon them, not for anything. But no. If it was me alone, I would not be this. I would have been kind, and...urged Hydaelyn to find one more suited to her light. I’ll never abandon my duty, but...,” she all but whispers, nose pressed to the side of his neck, trying to chase the chill in her bones away, “I’m not...I can’t be like Minfilia. She Accepted fate with so much strength and grace and no fear at all. And I can’t be like my beloveds, for whom the sun shines, who give so much of themselves with kindness. Or like Lyrit, cut from the very cloth of heroism and duty and devotion. I can only be me. And being me comes with nightmares, and too tight skin, and a willingness to be...to be the one who does the wrong thing, the unsavory, wretched, dark thing, for the right reasons, so the people I love don’t have to.”

The confession all but flows, a geyser unstoppered from an ill-fit constraint, and by the end she feels a laugh bubbling in her throat. A cold, tired, almost cruel thing. 

“That’s what I dream about. Being trapped and burning with more than I can bear alone, because fate chose me, and I chose my loved ones, and I was not enough. Can you still love me, knowing that? That I am not nearly as much, as good, as you think I am?” She can barely hear herself ask the question, doesn’t feel it as real until she feels the intake of breath under her hand. The move to pull away. 

The arms that surround her are warm and scarred and tanned from the Gyr Abanian sun, and they wrap around her waist and pull her closer, solid and tightly. The scruff of his less-than-impressive beard scratches against her cheek, as he presses a kiss to her jaw, and then her nose. Her eyes shoot open with a start, and meet that mismatched gaze glowing back at her, soft and desperately, heart-wrenchingly sad. 

“I think that I could, if you’d let me,” he says, slowly, almost savoring the words, “I can’t bear the burden of the fate you struggle with, Yldegarde. I couldn’t bear it for Minfilia, and I can’t for you, and it renders me quite...” _powerless. So damnably, infuriatingly powerless_. Is what echoes unspoken in his voice, shines with agonized light on his face. He sighs, shakes the guilt from the air, and looks at her again as the early morning light starts to shine through the colored panes, casting him in gold and blue and deep violets. Casting him in her colors. So, beautiful and tired and terrible…

“But I can love you. And I can know that for all you see yourself as, for as keen as your mind is, you seem to invariably miss the best parts. Were I simply able to remind you of them, from time to time, with any sort of efficacy, then perhaps I could perform quite the service, and earn my keep in your good graces.” He punctuates his statement with a soft, dearly pained smile, as delicate as anything. His sincerity always seemed to be at such great cost to his careful persona, constantly slipping to show what lie underneath.   
“You don’t have to earn your keep, you foolish man. This isn’t an obligation of servitude, I only want you of your own free will.” She snorts half-heartedly, and presses a kiss to his cheek. 

“Not an obligation, but a desire, darling. I can’t chase the nightmares away, and I can’t bear the burden that causes them. But I can love you, quite easily, and with enthusiasm. This is simply part of it.” He argues, before loosening his arms and pulling her in for a real kiss this time, deep and dark and utterly, bewitchingly...calming. Her eyes are heavy by the time they separate again, breath mingling in the chill of the morning.

“Now, may I take you back to bed, Miss Kolfrid? I cannot promise no further nightmares, but I do think you need the rest. And I, regrettably, do as well, and I’d rather it occur with you beside me.”

She all but giggles, around the tears that linger in her eyes and the exhaustion that coils in her belly. 

“Yes, Waters, you may take me back to bed. I dare say your attentions have soothed me more than this dreadful tea. And I’d not send you off on your next foray into enemy territory without at least one good night’s rest here.” 

“Tis’ more like morning’s rest, love.”

“Don’t be pedantic, dear, it doesn’t suit you.” 

“Oh, no, I’ll leave that particular skill to Urianger-“


	9. Sweet Memory

“I don’t think I ever realized you had quite so many tattoos.” He doesn’t sound displeased, more…marveling, as his hands trace the lines across her ribs, circling one hip, dipping into her sternum.

“You’ve never noticed? I’m surprised.” She yawns, stretching out her arms above her head and softly brushing the back of her canopy. 

“When would I have?” His head pops up, and she sees the confused laughter in his quicksilver eyes, “The one on the bridge of your nose, of course, the bands on your arm on occasion, but…the rest. A very exciting surprise."

“I…well, I’m sure there’s been occasions you’ve seen me less dressed. I hardly prance around looking grandmotherly.” She snorts, and tears a hand through her tangled hair. The braid that had contained the mess had long since come undone, held barely by a ribbon that clung feebly to life. Her hair never did quite want to behave, and it had gotten so absurdly long as of late. 

“I can’t recall one that showed off this in any great detail,” He pokes at the apex of the curving lines under her breasts, where they dip above her stomach,”And I do recall much of our time together being spent clothed. Almost all of it until recently, actually.”

She flushes, crossing an arm over her face and enjoying the moment as he continues his tracing, pressing kisses intermittently to the curls of ink. It’s a euphoric sort of moment, soft and quiet and all too sweet. 

“Shepherd’s slops!” She yelps suddenly as the memory surfaces, and then claps a hand over her mouth, laughing. The sound shocks Thancred out of his musing, and as such, his affections, which is such a loss that nearly sobers her enthusiasm. 

“Beg your pardon?” Thancred pushes himself up onto his hands to look her in the face, perplexed as ever.

“When we…before Ifrit. Impersonating poor refugees seeking employment, remember? Changing in the brush?” She gestures vaguely at the ceiling and bats her eyelashes at him, sinking comfortably into her pillows, “You had to have seen them then, even somewhat. I had them before I even set foot in Eorzea, after all, and I was hardly able to hide behind the brush, I’m too tall.”

“Shocking as it may be, I actually did not spy on you changing when we’d known each other for barely a month.” He replies dryly, flopping over onto the pillows and propping his head up on one hand to look at her with amusement. 

“Oh, now that is a shock. I’m quite embarrassed.” She sighs, curling towards him just so and dragging his free hand over to rest on her hip. 

“Not for lack of finding you attractive, of course, but more the propriety and expedience of the thing, you see. No need for shame there. I absolutely do find you attractive, and I certainly did then. I simply had to wait.” 

“Oh, no, it’s not that, it’s…,” She snorts, and shakes her head, dislodging the ribbon that held the last of her hair in place, “I looked at you. And now I feel like quite the lecher.” 

The slow, startled blink she’s met with reminds her of a Mi’qote more than a Hyur. 

“Excuse me?” 

“I looked. I had to, ah…get my fill, so to speak, since I was newly interested and Nymeia knows I didn’t anticipate surviving a fight with a primal, of all things, and that’s what it was coming to quite quickly, so…I looked. I enjoyed my look, in fact. Truly, the memory held me for some time. ”

“Yldegarde Kolfrid, I can't believe you spied on me getting dressed in the bushes in the interest of fantasizing later and didn’t bother to tell me until now.” He smirks at her, clearly not bothered by the idea. She’s going to give him an ego, at this point. Not the worst thing in the world.

“You have a marvelous ass, Thancred. You did then, and you certainly do now, but now of course I get to enjoy it in close proximity,” As she answers, she does squeeze a cheek in question, snuggling in closer, “I can’t believe you didn’t look. I wouldn’t have minded.” 

“Oh, of all the regrets these past years have held…Truly, I am blessed that you’ve given me yet another.” He offers a melodramatic sigh before dropping back, flat on his back to stare up at the canopy with faux-chagrin. 

She laughs, and rolls over to throw a leg over his waist, soothing a hand over his shoulder with a smile. 

“A shame, darling, really, but at least you got to have that particular itch scratched right away when you saw me for the first time. I waited years. I had to hope your ass didn’t lose its luster if I ever got to see it again.” 

“Well I am certainly pleased not to disappoint in this particular arena,” He meets her laugh with his own, pressing his fingers back to the vine tracing her hip, “I’ll just make up for the lost time, then, and memorize every line.”

“Mmm, I suppose I can be still enough for that, if properly motivated.” She teases back, and grins when he pulls her into the kiss.


	10. Best Intended Goodbyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Before Thancred leaves for reconnaissance in Garlemald, Yldegarde makes the effort for a rather memorable parting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is another smut-that-ends-somber chapter, and I am not sorry.

The unfortunate reality of the situation is that it utterly lacks the romance they’d both prefer. That was, of course, the trouble with taking things slow and in secret- the rest of their lives were less so. Something would always pull, something else would push, absences would stretch for ages and reunions only moments. 

But this is...a goodbye. And goodbyes called for making the most of every moment, didn’t they? Because you never knew when goodbye would stick, they both know that. Somehow, they are much better at the things that happen before goodbyes.

Technically, they’re still dressed as they move to a back room in the Stones. Ylde’s dress is as short as it always is, and bunched up around her waist and being roughly unlaced to under her ribs exposes enough to work with. Thancred still has his boots on, shirt undone where her hands have plunged under it, pushed it back until it catches on some absurd bit of belting or buttons, pants pushed down enough to be positively scandalous. The time is limited, the space is barely, blessedly private, and romance is dead, but they’ve stolen their moment. 

His leg is brought up hard between her thighs as she holds him steady, his arm braced against the wall and ready to go at a moment’s notice. His free hand is in her dress, nails scraping at her back, as he breathes heavily against her throat. He’s bitten down a few times, starving and desperate at the friction of her and her hand, and she’s certainly returned the favor. His neck is a mess of red blotches that will bruise, that are bruising, smears of her lipstick along his pulse that he’ll have to clean off later. 

“Please, please-“ he’s panting into her shoulder, shuddering as she moves her hand down him again, deliberate and slow. She wants to tease him. To draw this out, make it perfect and kind and good. Something sweet to remember after a parting. But the moment doesn’t allow for it. The friction of him against her makes her shiver as he grinds his thigh, digs his nails in deeper. 

“Ask me again?” She murmurs into his mouth, and swallows down the hungry, absolutely starving, silent response, the tongue in her mouth, the rough hand on her hip as she throws one leg around his waist. 

“Yldegarde-“ He growls her name into her mouth, and she shakes with the syllables, freeing the laces of one side of her underwear and pulling them aside, getting caught on the curve of her boot. 

“We could have moved at least, into the- ah!” She yelps with the sudden change in altitude, as she lands flat on her ass on the cold floor. Thancred barely catches himself on his hands, hovering above her with a horrified expression. 

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to…I can’t…” He trips over the explanation, and only seems to startle when she laughs, latching her hands behind his neck to pull him into a kiss.

“I can’t believe a rogue and a dancer in training lost their balance because they were too distracted trying to get in each others pants. Aren’t we supposed to be more graceful than this?” She snickers, and feels the flush of his face against her throat where it lands. 

“You don’t even wear pants.” He whistles between his teeth, hoarse and rumbling, and startles when her legs wrap around his waist and she pulls herself up to brush a kiss across his lower lip.

“No, I don’t. I’m not. You barely are. Thancred,” she whispers conspiratorially, “Thancred, Thancred… _lie to me_.”

“Lie to you?” He rasps as he pulls her closer to him, groans as she takes him in, panting. 

“Tell me you’re coming back soon,” She murmurs, and wraps her arms around the back of his neck, settles herself a little easier, a little more comfortably, “Tell me…Tell me you’ll be in one piece, and…mmph!”

He occupies her then, rough thumb brushing against her in disjointed rhythm, mouth busy capturing her own. She can’t get another word in edgewise for moments, and the necessity blurs into background noise to some extent, as she rolls her hips against his, huffs into the space between them. 

“You talk…so much…” He mumbles into her throat, stuttering on the words for a moment as she digs her thighs into his hips, “Of course I’m coming home to you, of course I’ll be just as…fuck, Ylde, can you...mmmm...”

His voice seems to rattle in his throat, and she swallows it down, bitter smile working at her lips. 

“You’ll barely miss me.” Against the curve of her shoulder, punctuated by the rough kiss against already bruising, flushed skin. 

“I’ll be back, and I’ll have taken down the empire myself, a silent one man army, and there will be no more Ascians, no more primals, nothing that needs your attention but me and my-“ He chokes, sputters against her collarbone as she pushes him back to seated, pulls herself into his lap with barely more than a flourish to resume her ministrations.

“Love, you’re losing the immersion a bit. Be reasonable, at least,” She chuckles into his hair, feels him press kisses to her chest, his hands scrabble at her back. 

“Ah, but wouldn’t that be…wonderful,” He sighs into her sternum, and meets her rhythm, quiet and focused, “A little bit of wish fulfillment wouldn’t be quite remiss. Just imagine a world where we could take our time, where I could just, ask you to be mine, really mine-” 

She almost answers, almost manages the I am yours before she feels his hands shake, the ragged breaths getting faster, and simply holds him still and steady, keeps her pace and lets him gasp into her throat and finish instead. She doesn’t know when her eyes started to water, to pour over, until the drips splash against his eyelashes, cold and freezing in place as they hit. The chill of the air is deepening, and she’s shivering against him, and he looks…frightened, almost, and so, so tired. The arms around her loosen, until hands reach to grasp at her face, brushing away at the tears that freeze too quickly to let them have easy work of it.

“Ylde.” He murmurs, and the warmth of his hands seems to melt some of the tear tracks, letting them fall further. He doesn’t ask her what’s wrong. He knows, she knows. 

“I’m sorry, I…I’ll be fine, just a moment…” She tries to wave it off, but catches the sight of her fingers turning blue with the chill building, and shivers, and screws her eyes shut to take a deep, shaking breath. The temperature rises back up, just slightly, incrementally to normal, and she sighs with the effort of it, slumping into his hands on her cheeks. 

“You’re scared.” comes the whisper, and it jolts in her spine, pushes her away from his chest and sending her hands grasping for her shirt. 

“I’m not, that’s…that’s ridiculous.” She huffs, and watches her breath dissipate into the air when she opens her eyes. 

“You turn to ice when you’re afraid.” He sighs, and brushes her hair back from her face a bit, careful and gentle. There’s so much patience in the gesture, so much…love, that she almost finds herself in a renewed bout of tears. Instead, she pulls away from him, out of his lap, rummaging in their discarded spare bits of clothing. 

“I do not.”

“You do. You always have, since I’ve known you. Ice for fear, fire for anger, lightning for…well, everything else, really, but…”

She pauses in her shuffling, trying to grab some sort of rag or handkerchief to clean them both off, to stare at him. The panic has faded, somewhat, replaced by weary worry and soft, soft fondness. His eyes are so tired, but they’re fixed on her, and his mouth is curved into some sort of exhausted, carefully guarded non-expression. He’s pulled his pants back up, shrugged his shirt back into a semi-reasonable state, and sits on the floor still, watching her scramble. 

“I didn’t think you’d managed to know me quite so well,” she manages, quietly, and drops her gaze to the floor as she shifts, pulls her dress back down and works at the lacing of the front, “A…a pity, then.”

He sighs, and pulls her fumbling fingers away, making way for her hands drop to her own thighs as he finishes lacing her dress back up for her. 

“And why, pray tell, is it a pity, dear, beloved Yldegarde?” 

“The loss of mystery, of course.” She lies through her teeth, and watches the wry, unamused quirk of his mouth as he looks back. 

“I...if you know me, I can’t hide. I can’t hide when I’m afraid, I can’t pretend that I’m not...I can’t pretend that I don’t have the worst feeling about you leaving, that I wish I could keep you here. That I wish someone else was as damnably good at what you do in the shadows, for once.” She sighs, and lets her head drop into her shoulders, ears pressed tightly down to her skull. 

“You know I would still go if there was. Just like you have your role to play...I have mine. And much more to prove and improve.” 

“Thancred, please, just…,” she isn’t sure what she’s trying to ask of him, but she does, quietly, staring into his mismatched eyes with her own, pleading, “please.”  
He leans into her, kisses her deep and true and gentle, tangling his hands in her hair. 

“I’ll come back. Or, if worst comes to worst you may have to find me one more time. No matter what, though...I love you. And you can’t get rid of me that easily, not now.”  
“Not ever.” She whispers, and brushes a lock of hair out of his eyes. 

“Now who’s saying unreasonable things, Ylde? You’re supposed to live so much longer than I will.” The smile he gives is gallant and dashing and oh so heartbreaking in its sincerity and it’s naked, easy, exhausted want. That he wants to stay with her. That he loves her. That he’d want a lifetime, too, if he could have it. If he could ever deserve it. 

“But you better not cut that time short,” she warns, soft and gentle, presses her kisses to his brow, “as best as you can. Neither of us would…”

She stops herself there, feels the rigid line of him straightening up, knowing full well what she means. How, for once, perhaps, she and Minfilia would have been of one mind. Minfilia, who is gone, and taken, and...who even knows. Who wanted Thancred to live too. But saying so is cruel, and all too soon, and it’s better to stop before it becomes too bittersweet. 

“I’m sorry.” She whispers, and holds his face in her hands as she wobbles to her knees, careful and indelicate. 

“You’re right.” He offers, quiet and so, so far away. They pull each other up, smoothing lines and settling belts and trimmings, careful lacing and buttons. They’re still barely a breath apart, even then. 

“Doesn’t mean I should say it,” her cheek settles on the top of his head, tickling at her nose with wisps of ash-white hair, “Just be careful. Please.”

“Of course,” he assures back, and pulls her into a tight, tight embrace, just as starving as anything, “I love you.”

“I love you too.” She murmurs, and then it is all too quickly...done. Gone. 

She sees him off with a smile, brittle and careful. Knows that when he’s gone she’ll find a thousand things to fill the time, to muddy her mind and keep it focused on the task at hand. That her boys will still be there with her. That she’ll be alright. 

Being in love with Thancred Waters was just cruel, sometimes. But a cruelty she wanted, at least, among the many. A choice. 

At least he can’t see how the windows frost over as he goes.


	11. Certainty and Circumstance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As things hit a head in the conflict with Garlemald, Yldegarde is distracted by an altogether different kind of loss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now we live in Shadowbringers, where I weep constantly.

“Hello, love.” She manages to force the words out, through gritted teeth. Something like this always struck her as silly. Pointless. But she’s here anyway, against her wiser instincts. Her fingers grip the edge of the borrowed bed that holds him, barely holding her steady as she sits, gently, carefully, on the edge. Careful not to disturb the empty form there, for all it was worth. 

“I know you aren’t...here. You’re not in this body, right now, you can’t hear me, and that is...that is an entirely other thing. But I... I suppose I’m here anyway. You can make fun of me for it when I see you again. I actually...I look forward to it.” She keeps watching the door, waiting for someone to interrupt her before she really begins falling, wandering along this path of uniquely morose madness. But no one comes. The chirurgeon has let her be, with her grief. Her dearests are tending their own wounds, waiting for the worst. Her remaining friends are much too busy planning defense, something she should be involved in, so many things she should be doing…

But she sits on the bed of a man who is not in himself, and she holds a hand that is still warm and flush with life despite being bereft of what made it so valuable, and she...she speaks to someone that isn’t there. That can’t possibly hear her. 

“I love you. I say it often, I know, in secret, our secret, but I do. I love you. And I was so...proud, for a moment at that council, would you believe it? When you laid out your plans, I thought, how lucky. How lucky that you’re mine. That I’m yours. How clever, how daring, how absolutely...,” she pushes the palm of her free hand against the threat of tears welling up in her eyes, “when we see each other again, and we will. We will. We have to, don’t we? But when we do.”

The breath she takes is shaky, and she drops his hand to pull her own to catch her sob before it breaks, watches his hand fall without a shred of the life it once held, for all the blood that flowed through it and the health it had. His fingers brush the floor, and hang there, and it tears open something deep in her chest. 

“When we see each other again, I will tell you everything. Every beautiful and terrible thing, what you missed, what I...I will tell you how foolish I am, sitting here, talking to myself, pretending you can hear me for some insane reason. I will tell you how something broke in me when I watched you fall, and I don’t know how to fix it without you.” 

She nearly hiccups her words as she talks, and her knees have pulled up under her chin, arms wrapped tightly around them for security. The humming she tends towards, when all is overwhelming and she needs to feel centered, barely registers, the songs blending together in their panicked rhythm, circling around to old lullabies she remembers only singing to herself when she was frightened and alone. It is she and an empty husk, in their strange and morbid solitude, with the barest hum of a lullaby filling spaces that desperately crave voices.

“How pathetic that feels. How I never remembered how easy it is to lose you. What a bloody fool I am...”  
———————  
Five years is...an awfully long time, she thinks. The last five years of her own life have been an eternity of events, after all. But five years in another world? In another life? And it is...an awfully long time to be without. With much to contend with, when reunions come to pass. So much...everything. 

So she doesn’t say it, even as she watches him, awake and alive and so different and so familiar all at once. The words don’t cross her lips no matter how much her heart swells in her chest, her mouth curls into a lovesick smile to even see his face. Because five years is a long time. Much longer than the weeks it’s been for her. Much longer than anything. And the thought had been rattling around her skull since she came to the Crystarium, anyway. Since the Exarch had said just how long her companions had been there, fighting the worst, while she had barely been allowed to miss them. 

She doesn’t bring words to the question that lingers, because there isn’t...time. There is never time. But, maybe, five years was enough to fall out of love with her. And she is just as in love with him as she was the moment he left. 

It’s the cruelest thing she can do to herself, perhaps, but it is, she reminds over and over, perhaps the kindest in the long run. She doesn’t have to hear it from his lips that he’s lost the spark if she doesn’t press the issue. 

He doesn’t look at her, not really. The glances slide past without anything they once held. His eyes are cloudy as ever. And she thinks, five years is fair. She can’t hold it against him.   
———  
“Come in! Oh really, dears, you know you don’t need to kno-” 

When the knock on her suite door drags her from the distraction of the night sky, her response is almost instant. So certain that her boys have come to settle in with her before retiring to their own room, hold tight and fast against the unfamiliarities of the world. It had become somewhat of a ritual in their time on the First, the sort of desperate clinging and silent reminding that they were together, and safe, that had become necessity. But when she does turn from the window, pulling her robe around her shoulders against the chill, it is not her boys she spies in the doorway. 

“...oh. Thancred. What brings you by?” She is almost proud of the tone with which she recovers her floundering dignity. Her hands firmly knot themselves into the tie of her dressing robe, for want of something to do that isn’t reach. Reach out, reach for him. Reach for another familiar thing. Especially when it isn’t hers to reach for anymore. 

Thancred all but stares at her from the doorway of her suite, seeming to...see her, for the first time since they’d been reunited. Truly see her. His eyes are wide and startled, their clouds chased away for a moment, and the sight of him aches. A wound not yet healed. Her anger at him was almost forgotten, looking at him look at her. See her, in a familiar way.

“Your...M’oe passed me in the rotunda, and claimed you were looking for me. He claimed it was dearly important, so I...” He stumbles over the explanation, seeming to have forgotten the use of that infamous silver tongue. It would be charming, if she wasn’t...if she hadn’t... it would be quite charming. 

“I’m coming to realize perhaps he was simply...”

“Meddling,” she provides softly, and straightens up before motioning for him to come out of the doorway, spare passerby their conversation, “he was meddling, as is his wont. He’s proactive when he’s worried about me, unfortunately.”

“Ah, well. I suppose that is...his way, isn’t it? I’d quite forgotten how crafty he could be. But I see that you weren’t expecting me, and I shouldn’t interrupt your well-deserved rest.” The door closes after him anyway, despite his answer. He seems almost surprised of it, once they’ve been closed away from prying eyes. Stands so far from her at her balcony that it might as well have been an ocean. But he stares at her, like he’s drinking up the sight, like a starving creature. 

“You’re here.” He all but sighs, and she can’t hide the amused quirk of her mouth. 

“This is my room, after all.” 

“No, I...I had all but given up hope that the Exarch would successfully summon any of you, much less...all three. I cant believe the luck it must have taken to bring you here, you...you and, ah, Khiiral and M’oe, of course. It is good to have you all. A much stronger chance, at last.” He’s trying very hard not to say what he means, and she admires it. She’s not relishing what comes, her avoidance clearly not in the cards to continue. She wishes he’d leave as much as she wants him to stay. She wishes that fury didn’t well up in her breast when he says he’d lost hope, because she knows what that means, she knows what he’s become to a child who deserves better...she wishes he’d just leave. She wishes she didn’t feel lighter just seeing his face. But she just can’t ask him to go. 

“We’re too tightly entwined, my boys and I. Supposedly it did confound the summoning a bit, though I profess I barely understood the particulars.” She shrugs, waves a hand dismissively as she leans on the long table that held her scattered belongings and a fair few unfinished sandwiches. She’s barely had an appetite these days, though her days of forgetting meals and working until she dropped are long behind her now. Some bad habits seemed determined to return with the current state of affairs. 

“Of course, of course, just...” the hand he rakes through ashen hair shakes, just barely. She could pretend not to notice. She could let him leave. Instead, she instinctively grabs a glass, pours some of that strange Norvrandt wine into it, and holds it out wordlessly. He takes it with a grateful look, throwing it back quickly before seeming to flush, realizing his fault. 

“Careful, beloved, unless you’ve somehow improved your tolerance in the last five years. I won’t send you off when I’m not sure you’ll even make it back to your apartments.” Ylde cracks wryly from her perch on the table before realizing her mistake as she hears the choking sound he makes, the sputter. 

“Ah,” she murmurs, catching his wide eyes, “My apologies. Adjusting is...slow going, and I’m quite tired. Forgive me.“

“Forgive you?” He rasps, taking the moment to place his emptied glass on the opposite end of the table from her, steadying himself there. 

“I can’t imagine five years have gone smoothly, given everything, and of course, with this Minfilia, as darling as she is, the inherent...everything there. I don’t...I wouldn’t blame you. Time is cruel, as they say. Absence does not always make the heart grow fonder, particularly when there are more pressing concerns.” She pours herself a glass as well now, gripping the stem all too tightly. Full glad she is that everything here seems to be metal, or wood, or some sort of crystal too sturdy for her grasp. It wouldn’t do to walk into M’oe and Khiiral’s room to ask them to help pick glass out of her hand when it’s clear they’d been planning to meddle in her affairs since their return to the Crystarium. Someone would get hurt. Someone would be hurt much worse than she already feels.

“For me, I watched you fall just over a month ago. And now I’m here! And this is all...quite a lot. It’s for the best that everyone seems so intent on forcing me to rest, as I’m finding myself...dearly needing it. Though the more I can rest the more I get to think, and that is a bit of a curse. Always another edge on the sword.” 

She downs her glass while he all but gapes at her, and she sighs, closes her eyes and lets her head fall back, embracing the faint night breeze and smell of rain in the air. She can’t look at him if she’s going to say the next thing. Can’t feel that rush of warmth in her chest, the solidity of her heart in her gut. She hasn’t killed it yet, the poisoning of anger and heartbreak’s threat not as efficient as one would hope. 

“Maybe that’s why I don’t like swords...You don’t have to break the news to me, I promise. Needn’t say a word if you don’t need it yourself. I’d not ask you to. We have our jobs to do, after all, and I’m full capable of doing mine despite. You were ever a friend, and I’d not ruin that by grasping too tightly at something buried with time. I’m not nearly that arrogant...”

The footsteps are light as ever, always so strange. But the door doesn’t open. She waits, and she waits, and it never sounds. She all but levitates off the table when she feels the hand on her cheek instead, gently leading her, and her eyes snap open as she brings her head back forward. Sat as she is on the edge of the table, he’s at her eye-level, looking back at her with some unreadable expression. 

She can’t speak. Can’t make her throat work properly, desperate to manage breathing as it is. 

“I am so glad you’re here,” he breathes, watching her face run it’s panicked gamut, the knuckles of his hand brushed up against her cheek, familiar and not quite right, “When I knew that the summoning was failing, that he may only bring one of you, if he managed at all, I hoped so dearly that it would be you. That I could see you again. And then I hoped it wouldn’t.”

He may as well have stabbed her, and the noise she manages is a strangled thing, pained and small. but he’s stepped nearer, inches from her, and it always did have the effect of stopping her heart. Stopping whatever impulse she’d chase next. 

“Even if it meant I didn’t see you again for some time, if I saw you at all, if return was ever made possible, I hoped that...perhaps, if you were left behind, you’d be spared this sort of pain. That I’d get to save you for once. Return that favor in all its bittersweet glory.” The strain in his voice is so familiar and so terrible all at once, and she aches to hear it. 

“And then, of course, Urianger saw you die,” his eyes have cast downward, pale lashes obscuring the shift in color, “All of you, but you...you. I couldn’t bear to know. I couldn’t bear to think of it. And now you’re here. Three years have I had to think about mourning you from an entire other star, if we failed, if I didn’t find a way to follow the path, and you’re here.” 

Something about his expression is so dear, so ardent, as his other hand flounders, seeming to hover lightly over her hip, unsure of whether he can trust himself to put it down. His uncertainty with her had always been such a surprise, given his confidence with everything else, and here is is wounding, waiting. 

“Thancred?” She whispers into the space, delicate and careful, leaning her cheek into his hand. It still shakes, those fingers on her face trying so dearly, desperately to hold onto something so intangible. She wants him to get to the point. To break her heart or take it back. Anything but this, uncertainty and circling. 

“Five years.” He breathes, and the hand finds her hip, the other tangling in her hair as he Stares at her, the look of a man who’d almost forgotten her face and it’s details, and who’d never forgive himself the trespass, the betrayal. 

“Two weeks and six days, give or take a few hours,” She offers quietly, around the thickening of her throat as her eyes go watery, “I may have been counting. I may have spent more time crying over your empty body than I care to admit, when I should well have been fighting a war. Quite the injustice I’ve put on my family, that.”

“Yldegarde...” he sighs, and there is almost a ghost of a smile there, hampered by a thousand things but still trying, “Would that you’d never have to cry over me.” 

“You make it terribly difficult not to, you know.” She tries to tease back, and frowns as the drips of tears splash on his hand anyway. 

“You’ve chosen a terrible sort of man to love, then. Would that I deserved the blessing you see fit to bestow on my weary heart, but I am ever selfishly grateful, especially...especially now.” It’s nearly a laugh, bitter and tired, but it’s very, very much him, and she can’t help but lean, press a kiss to the bridge of his nose. 

Something breaks, then, and the ghost of the man she adores pulls her to him, captures her reply, swallows her whole. Just like his hand on her cheek, in her hair, it’s familiar and not quite right, but she can bear it, she thinks, she can get used to it, if given the time, the practice...he doesn’t taste like himself either, but that too she can endure, and she does, wrapping her arms around his shoulders as he does his best to devour her. To make up for lost time. To remind himself that she is solid and alive and near him, with him, once more. 

“I’m very...mad at you, I hope you know.” She manages hoarsely when they pull away for a breath, ragged and unwilling. 

“I did pick up on that.” He huffs against her jaw, curling his hand around her back. The weight of it at the center is more comforting than she can admit, and something she didn’t realize she’d needed. 

“We’re going to have to talk about it. About her.” She warns, though it seems to lose its efficacy as a threat when she wraps her legs around his hips to keep him pressed against her chest. Her heartbeat echoing against his carefully rendered ghost. 

“Of course,” comes the regretful, heavy sigh, punctuated with another kiss to her throat, “Can it wait for a few minutes? One thing at a time, for once, would be quite appreciated.”   
She can’t help but giggle at that, dig her fingers into his hair and smooth his brow lightly with a kiss of her own. 

“I suppose the scolding you well deserve can be postponed until after you’ve kissed me a few more times. I can pretend not to be angry with you if you make it clear how much you’ve missed me. And maybe you’ll listen better too. Let something permeate that thick skull of yours.”

“Ah, I suppose I forgot how you need to be appeased before the safety of my trousers is called into question.” Is the reply she barely registers before he’s stolen her breath again. She rolls her eyes before she lets it go, clings to him like she desperately craves to do.   
———  
She hums her lullaby against his hair, later, curled tightly around. As if she’s afraid he’ll disappear again, if she closes her eyes. Though he seemingly sleeps, stripped to smallclothes and shamelessly stealing her blankets, and he can’t hear it, again, it feels more real now than before. Not quite perfect, but enough.

If only she wasn’t so absurdly furious at him, it might be more perfect. If only she wasn’t so afraid, either. 

Perhaps the lullaby she hums is more for herself than for him, now.


End file.
